1 Baumgartner

Marlee Baumgartner

Ashley Humphries

ENC 1101-0001

April 6th, 2015

Large companies today display women in ways in which they see them to be the most

effective in advertising sexually. The sexualizing of women in the modeling and fashion

industry has grown tremendously in the last decade, particularly with the lingerie icons of today

like Victoria Secret. Vendors like that of Victoria Secret create an ideal body in which they

display in all their ads attempting to appeal to both women and men. Women who see this body

tend to feel insecure about their own bodies because it doesnt match those of the ads, and begin

to desire the unachievable goal of the perfect body, what they dont realize is a large proportion

of these bodies are not achieved by a goal, or any women, but by Photoshop. With the Body by

Victoria campaign, Victoria Secret disregards these issues, and published an ad in which can be

interpreted as extremely offensive to consumers everywhere. Women and young girls daze at

Victoria Secret ads, see this body entirely too often and they begin to see it as a requirement, not

only to be sexy, but to be able to be comfortable with their own body. However, there is still one

tremendous pressure on women to be sexy, not for themselves, but for men.

Women are sexualized typically in advertisements directed towards men. However, with

ads like that of the Body by Victoria campaign, the agency makes the assumption that a womans

goal in purchasing this product is solely to impress men. The model in the Victorias Secret ads

positioned with her legs slightly open, kneeled down, this can be recognized as a very suggestive

sexual position. Along with the body language, including her facial expression and the way her

arm is draped across her body in order to emphasize her cleavage, the natural messiness of her

2 Baumgartner

hair, the lack of clothing, and the focus on the color black, these attributes tend to appeal to

appeal to a males sexual nature. The fact that this company is essentially attempting to sell to

women through what they believe men to desire is very demeaning. They are assuming that

womens only goals are to please men, they dont point out any of the benefits of the collection,

nor do they say anything about the collection itself at all really. What is being spoken of here is a

term coined as male gaze by Laura Mulvey in her essay Visual Pleasure and Narrative

Cinema it is defined as an ideal where the audience is forced to regard the action and characters

of a text through the perspective of a heterosexual man; the most desirable aspects of the

females body, in the eyes of a male, are emphasized, in order to intrigue the males eye. (Male

Gaze) The male gaze denies women agency, relegating them to the status of objects. The female

reader or viewer must experience the narrative secondarily, by identification with the male. It

should not be assumed that women are buying products only to impress men, advertisers should

target their consumer audience, which in this case is women, not men. In an attempt to expose

the Body by Victoria Secret campaign of its negative influence, I created this anti-ad which

displays a model posing for a photoshoot. However, this model doesnt have this ideal body

instead she has an average womens body, with pale skin, and her hair is tied up in order to take

emphasis off her body and instead put emphasis on the product. Next to her is the tagline Body

by Victorias Secret. Everybody is beautiful. With a primarily white background. On the other

side of the camera, an image more like that of the original ad is shown. It features the original

model, with the original background with the text Body by Photoshop. What do you really

see? essentially to appear as if the image that is developed by the camera is completely different

than that of the original image. The additional model with pale skin, white clothing, and hair

pulled back, with a friendly smile shifts the focus from the sexual aspect to an appeal to the

3 Baumgartner

product in a tasteful way. By making these minor changes concerning the additional model, it

reverses the assumption and targets the consumer audience of women, buying for themselves.

Due to the assumption of mens desires, advertisers have shaped their models to what

they see these men being attracted to: a small figure-which they assume to be desirable-tan skin,

luxurious hair, and what they call curves. In the Body by Victorias Secret campaign they

display this same body shape with the model pictured; by placing a tagline near it saying All

you see is curves they imply that the body pictured has desirable curves. This ideal body

that is seen all too often in societies ads leaves women, and young women everywhere feeling as

if they need this body. In this version of the ad the addition of the average women enlightens the

audience that these models with the ideal body are not the only women that are perceived as

beautiful, women of all shapes and sizes can be a displayed in a Victoria Secret ad and be

empowered by their lingerie. This concept is again brought to attention with the transition from

the original tagline to the new tagline Everybody is beautiful. The women in these ads who

appear to have these bodies that every girl dreams of, may not even necessarily have these

bodies. This empowers women to feel confident in themselves and not fall into the pressures of

society. What some women dont even realize is that these bodies, may not even be real, but

instead immensely altered with Photoshop.

The majority of models displayed in companies like Victorias Secret have been

physically altered in one way or another, whether it be there weight, height, eye color, skin color,

or bone structure, Photoshop is prevalent in advertisements. When creating the Body by Victoria

campaign, Victorias Secret focused primarily on the womens body, using statements like Love

your body to not only insinuate the importance to love the body you are in, but to love the Body

collection, in an effort to imply that when wearing the Body collection women will feel

4 Baumgartner

comfortable in their own bodies. The largest mistake with this advertising choice has to do with

the rhetorical situation, the company is attempting to use womens natural bodies to their

advantage, and however in their ads they use Photoshop to enhance the models bodies. Victorias

Secret is known for their fit models and strict diets, at which in no way represent an average

consumer of their product, but even these models are Photoshop-ed. Due to this controversial

issue, the company should have thought twice before placing the tagline All you see is curves

next to a model with virtually no shape, when the irony is that most of the curves on women

models are Photoshop-ed off. To resolve this lack of thinking, the woman in front of the camera

is noticeably natural. She is an average height, weight, with a lack of tan and muscular tone, to

once again relate to the average consumer. Instead of reading All you see is curves. It now

reads Everybody is beautiful, with the word body bold, clearly identifying with the new

model and pointing out that once again Photoshop is not a necessity to be beautiful. In an effort

to expose the mistakes of the company, behind the camera there lies an image that is supposed to

reflect that of the model in front of the camera, however it is clearly a completely different

image. This creates a parody-like emphasis to the amount of Photoshop actually used in these

types of ads. In addition to this, the tagline is again changed to Body by Photoshop. What do

you really see? The last change regarding the poor identification of the rhetorical situation is in

the advertisement heading, the word secret in Victorias Secret is in bold to continue to

focus on the use of Photoshop and unrealistic women as a comparison to everyday consumers.

This correction takes into account the thoughts and feelings of women who see these models and

think they need the bodies they have, it allows them to realize that these bodies arent real bodies

per say, and that their own body is beautiful in every way. Without such changes these

5 Baumgartner

unachievable goals get into young girls and womens head and leave them feeling helpless and

insecure about their imperfect self.

Young girls in particular are very needy of societies approval and if they feel they dont

have it they may take extreme measures to do so, or feel overly self-conscious of their own body.

In a clip from the documentary Miss Representation discussing the insecurities caused by

advertising in women, Jean Kilbourne, EdD, author and senior scholar of Wellesley Centers for

Women reports Girls get the message from very early on that what's most important is how they

look, that their value, their worth, depends on that and boys get the message that this is what's

important about girls, and we get it from advertising When young women see ads like those

of the Body by Victoria campaign they idolize these women and want to be just like them, that is

why the advertising works so well, they see this beautiful model wearing a Body by Victoria bra

and associate that with the beauty of the model, leaving them wanting the bra. If this young

women, or any women in general, doesnt have this ideal body they feel insecure, self-

conscious, and maybe even not good enough. Other women may take extreme measures to

achieve this body, such as eating disorders, extraneous exercise, or diet pills. Two things in the

anti-ad defend against this the best: the addition of the average model and the replacement of the

slogan with Everybody is Beautiful. The average model allows the young women to not only

look up to those of the model pictured originally, but to an average, healthy women. The

replacement of the slogan creates an environment where everyone is seen as equals and

distinguishes the possibility for the development of insecurities. With these changes all women

can feel more comfortable with themselves and the products they are buying.

The advertising agencies of today seem to aiming increasingly farther from that of the

actual product, but that of which they believe to sell the best. Whether this includes massive

6 Baumgartner

sexualizing of women, the thought of the ideal body, or the overly exaggerated use of

Photoshop; each of these strategies when applied are intentionally or unintentionally demeaning

to women. The advertisers dont necessarily realize the level of negative effects these strategies

have on women of all ages in todays society. If more agencies published ads with contents

similar to those of this anti-ad it would increase womens self-esteem, and open the eyes of the

advertising agencies to create more respectful advertising which could in an increase in sales and

bettering of their company.

7 Baumgartner

Works Cited.

Daoud, Marliene. Miss Representation Trailer. Online Video Clip. Youtube

. Youtube. 11 Jan 2012. 5 April 2015.

Mulvey, Laura. Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema-Male Gaze. Art and Popular

Culture. 1975. Web. 2 April 2015.