Return to Text Yourself Index How Has Your Body Image Been Influenced by Advertising? "To be nobody but yourself in a world that wants you to be anyone but yourself is the hardest thing in the world." e e cummings The Real Women Project claims that the average American sees or hears between 400 to 600 ads per day. When one considers the speed with which ads flash across the television screen, the billboards along our roads, the stores with enticing promotions, it is easy to believe we see over 40 milion ads by the time we are 60 years old. What is most interesting is that one out of eleven ads has a direct message about beauty. And if you want a really startling statistic, you might be amazed to know the average women's magazine has 63 diet ads. The average men's magazine has one! It is also not surprising that the fastest growing business is the diet industry—even though they only have a 3% success. We wouldn't pay any attention to another business that produced such low results, but we've apparently bought into the idea that our bodies are not good enough. For example, 70 percent of women wear size 12 or higher. But size 12 is considered a "large" size. And Kathy Kohlman, the founder of the Real Women's Project believes that, "Self hate is capitalism's love child." Now, before we get a ton of e-mails pointing out the high rate of obesity in the country, we will acknowledge that many people, men and women, weigh far more than is healthy for their hearts and circulatory systems. However, causing us to think of our bodies as a country at war is not healthy. It only exacerbates the problem. Therefore, as a complement to the article What is the Origin of Your Body Image?, one of our Empowering Women articles, and the Test Yourself e-mail you can send yourself on that topic, on this page we ask several questions that we hope will get you started thinking critically about the ads you see. Have you see an ad today that makes you feel good about your body? What ad makes you feel uncomfortable or critical toward your body? If you've allowed these ads to sink into your unconsciousness without giving the subject much thought, now may be the time for you to notice how unnaturally skinny the women in many ads are. Notice how often women are disempowered by being told they must buy something, eat something, avoid eating something, follow some program, wear certain clothes, have no wrinkles, and present themselves as close to the ideal woman as they can possibly make themselves. © Copyright 2003, Learning Place Online