Hanadee Abu-Zayed

Melissa Dempsey

English 1200, sec 070

Project II

8 April 2013

                                        Advertisements Manipulating Images and Our Minds

            Hollywood advertisements send out one message for women and this message tells us that the

way we appear is what matters the most. If you turn the pages of a magazine we are given this 

illustration of ideal beauty, which is unachievable due to the amount of photo shop used. Jean 

Kilbourne states in “Killing Us Softly 4: Advertising’s Image of Women” that “Women learn from a 

very early age that we must spend enormous amounts of time, energy, and above all money striving to

achieve this look and feeling ashamed and guilty when we fail. And failure is inevitable because the 

ideal is based on absolute flawlessness.” Advertisements lower the self-esteem of many women and

create an unrealistic ideal of female beauty causing eating disorders, depression and lowered self-

esteem.

            Maybelline, a makeup company, is one of the major advertisers that has always stood out to me.

The models in the makeup commercials or makeup ads are literally perfected to death, where they 

actually look unreal! In the photos below are examples of models in Maybelline who appear to have 

absolutely no imperfections. They have glowing skin with no bags, wrinkles, scars, blemishes and 

pores. Flawlessness is what Jean Kilbourne calls it and not even the person in this advertisement looks

this way. No one can or will ever look this way and not many women are told this.

            Cindy Crawford once said, “I wish I looked like Cindy Crawford.” This shows that even the 

women in the advertisements are aware that they have been photo shopped into a perfected version. 

Killing Us Softly 4 shows that Photoshop has the power to put different body parts of women together 

to make one perfect woman. A photo editor of ads states that, “we see one woman, but we are really 

seeing four, one woman’s face, another woman’s hair, another woman’s hands and another woman’s 

legs.” Through the use of retouching, altering, airbrushing, cosmetics and more, we are being fooled.

 We look up to beautiful celebrities such as Victoria’s Secret Angels, Kim Kardashian, Tyra Banks and

Megan Fox, yet even these role models are made thinner, given a bigger chest, have removed cellulite, 

smaller noses and more. It is extremely rare to see a photograph in a magazine that has not been 

photoshopped. The photo ediotor also says, “Every picture has been worked on some 20, 30 rounds

going back and forth between retouchers and the client and the agency.”  Shocking, right?

            A Dove commercial called “Evolution” became viral hitting many social media sites, where 

many were stunned. It shows a woman who appeared as any other ordinary woman then transformed

into a whole different person with makeup artists and photo editors. Her eyes and lips were made bigger, face structure transformed and even her neck was made longer.  It sent out a message that these

are the types of photos that women and young girls compare their selves too. Jean Kilbourne made a 

point that all girls have no chance of having this ideal beauty but the people who struggle the most are

the ones who aren’t white. Advertisers shows that the lighter your skin is, the finer your hair is and the

more Caucasian-like features you have, the closer you are to that ideal look. Beyonce even has her skin lightened in a L’Oreal hair product commercial and Halle Berry, with Caucasian-like features, is the 

role model for women who are not white. Basically, when do you ever see a dark-skinned girl in the

magazine?

          Of course, this is going to affect a woman’s self esteem but it also effects how men feel as well. I

learned in my Women Studies class last semester that ads change how men feel about the woman they

are in a relationship with. They compare their partners to that hot and beautiful girl on the cover of GQ

Magazine or Cosmopolitan, increasing their standards. This usually affects girls, leading to a desperate

need of becoming thinner or more beautiful. This desperate need leads to depression and unhealthy 

habits such as bulimia, anorexia, excessive use of tanning beds and unfortunately, many more. Ana

Carolina Reston, a runway model, died a year ago of anorexia, weighing only 88 pounds. This shows

are much of an impact the media can have on a person. Are these the kind of role models we want for young girls? That the need to be thin and beautiful is worth risking your own life? This pressure of 

being beautiful and thin still occurs from the media, corrupting the minds of women, when in fact it is 

fake and unrealistic and has hurt the women in America who are truly beautiful! It has lowered self-

esteem causing eating disorders and depression and it is crucial for us to join together and end this!