“Exploring the representation of women that brands create in social media and their impact on consum

Beauty in women is defined by narrow stereotypes in social media adverts which focuses on looks of size, sexuality, emotion and relationship. It only represents the ideals of the young, sexualised, skinny, clear skinned, white western models. This means society generalizes and expects that all women must fulfil this beauty. This is an unrealistic representation and create pressures for young people to conform due to social influence even though images may have gone through manipulation. This means many young women suffer mental health problems like anorexia as they try to reach these unattainable goals. However, some social media campaigns combat this image of ideal beauty and focus on real beauty showing women from all different races, sizes, ages. This changes the way media is being consumed into a more positive representation that is more realistic and shows women as active rather than passive objects so instead of oppressing women, adverts empower them. Some can even argue social media is allowing people to self-brand themselves becoming their own producers, so they don’t have to reflect the traditional expectations.

In today’s 24/7 society there has been multiple technological and cultural changes so the world has become globalised. This is due to the change in using multi platforms to reach target audiences meaning media uses “Convergence” which is “change in the way media is produced and a change in the way media is consumed” (Jenkins, H. 2. 2006, p16). Social media advertising goes through careful mediation in production as for representation to be meaningful audience need to have shared norms and ideologies. Representation “connects meaning to language, signs and images to culture” (Hall, S, 2013).  In a media saturated society postmodernist argue that the distinction between reality and media representations are becoming blurred, advertising is no longer using the “reflective approach” of mirroring society’s norms. It’s now using the “constructionist approach” where meaning is being constructed through language, images and signs. This means the media isn’t reflecting and representing reality of the public but instead producing it, therefore it creates stereotypes to enhances realism so an audience can identify. However, these stereotypes are misrepresenting the real world as created very binary opposites in masculine and feminine representations. Due to these stereotypes’ society is reflecting media through socialising these expectations for gender. This means consumption which is; the action of using up a resource; has changed due to the change in the way media is produced in the representation. This suggest changing approach has meant there’s now convergence which is affecting society advertisements and representations.

The use of using advertising in social media is on the rise due to the internet form of communication being regularly checked by consumers. A survey found consumer scored social media medium the highest on “pastime and topicality dimensions” (Voorveld, H., Van, G., Muntinga, D., Bronner, F., 2018). Social media create awareness of brand due to its creativity, collaboration and relationship with consumer using frequent updates in today’s 24/7 society that keep audience entertained and informed. Technological advances allow greater globalisation meaning consumers are frequently viewing representation of women due to society’s ideologies of health, fashion and beauty in women. It has been found individuals who have “high use of social media platforms…. were at risk for developing eating disorders” (Austin, M., 2017). This proves that there is a link between social media advertising creating only one standard for all women and mental illness as its damaging consumers self-worth.

Representing a certain visual code of women is a popular way of engaging consumers to buy into brands and products on social media. This iconography has big impact on representation of femininity in what society expects women how to look and behave. Media portrays women as sexualised objects which gives women the impression that to be beautiful you must be sexy to attract the eyes of the dominant laden male culture. Advertising and consumer culture portray “women as objects designed to attract the gaze” and “emulate” women in advertisements. Women are portrayed with “sexualised female body parts” to create a “pornographic gaze” (McAllister, M., DeCarvalho, L., 2014). Kim Kardashian uses celebrity endorsement to advertise her products, she posted her classic blossom collection on Instagram to advertise her makeup products. The denotation of Kim is represented from the angle from above lying down surrounded in pink blossom flowers covering her naked body’s private parts. The connotation of this represents women as vulnerable and delicate in the eyes of men. However, also represent women as provocative as the flowers and nudity symbolises sexual desires of the opening of the vulva. The feminist concept of male gaze (Laura Mulvey) is relevant here as image is taken from a male point of view creating dominant power by men. When women look at other women, they look at themselves compare then imitate someone who’s seen as sexy in order to gain male gaze. However, even though this follows the iconography of sexuality in women, Kim Kardashian shows a new light in body image which embraces healthy curves rather than stick thin models.

Representation of using ideal body image in social media advertisements is sometimes used for marketing purpose for consumption as more tactical and persuasive. In media advertisements they use skinny anorexic models to “sell us more and more products so we will think we can achieve the ideal beauty” by making us “feel bad about ourselves” so we “buy products in orders to feel better about feelings” (Lachover, E. Barak-Brandes, S., 2009). This is an example of product endorsement where sliming ads may create illusion of a goal and aspiration to reach to suggest that product works but, it won’t just give them the body that shown on the adverts. Consumers buy into the product to look a certain way that society expects them but due to unrealistic, airbrushed photos, this goal is unattainable for a healthy body type so therefore creates low self-esteem in thousands of women.  This is true to sliming adverts in the ever so growing healthy living industry. The leading brand for sports nutrition “women’s best” advertises proteins shakes to “get in shape”. It features images of thin, toned women and curvy in all the right places, but the purpose of using the iconography is to advertise the product works. Companies like this feeds off audience insecurities of being fat and desires to be thin.

However, to some media producers of more prestigious brands it about women body image is about thin models looking better to represent their brands. They use the “Reflective Approach” (Hall, S, 2013) to reflect “meaning which already exists in the world” to reach the popular society’s expectations of body image. Brands like “Louis Vuitton” sell iconic handbags are filled with tall, thin models. It was found on a news article (Bruk D, 2017) “a model was fired for being too fat” so they encouraged her to only drink water for 24 hours. This proves that models for their company are in fact starving themselves which show unhealthy ideologies. Also there seems to be no brand purpose for using models to represent their luxurious brand, this means consumers feel they cannot identify to brands so they imitate them hoping fashion statement will lead to beauty.

Due to this, mental health is a spiralling problem in today’s 24/7 society where advertisements are frequently representing how women should look. Social media allows us to create our own media therefore individuals are now imitating role models off media adverts. However, some imitations are leading to damaging effects as it has become apparent images of women represented in the media is more damaging on consumption than men thus suggesting why “Eleven million women” compared to “one million men in the united states suffer from eating disorders” (Stephen, Hill, Ronald). This is due to beauty and fashion industries communicating “dominant ideology of female beauty” of thinness equating to beauty resulting in “women disciplining their bodies”. However, this dominant ideology of female beauty is a beauty myth as it “reaffirms standards of beauty that are unattainable” (Saad, G, 2004) which is due to heavily airbrushed photos.  The ted talk “Dying to be thin” (Thompson, S, 2015) has a good insight into this issue of body image where speaker discusses how her daughter changed her lifestyle due to social media adverts that created a idea that “body size 0 is normal” in media where in reality it’s not. This lowered her self-esteem and confidence levels as she thought about her healthy living too much, it was obvious as it is proven people with anoxia early signs are, they stop engaging in activities.

On the other hand, some social media advertising campaigns change this narrow ideal standard of beauty by representing a diverse range of women whether that is plus sizes, different races, disabled, people with medical conditions to underlie there’s no normal way women should look.  For instance, “self-representation” can “avoid misrepresentations” as women can “produce and distribute own media” where women don’t fit “beauty valued by popular media” (Calderia, S., De Ridder, S, 2017). This suggest social media platforms allow individuals to define beauty within their bodies even if it doesn’t comply to beauty standards. DOVE beautiful campaign raised public discussion on the issue of representation of femininity. Their Instagram account is interactive and encourages consumers to tag dove to show their real beauty of natural rather than artificial. This inspires other women to do the same thing. In every photo it uses positive captions with positive hashtags like self-love, women empowerment. It has seen through research that having more of a diverse iconography of women the less likely women are to develop mental health problems. Women who suffered low self-esteem said, “when they saw pictures like themselves, they felt better in themselves”. (redefine beauty creators for change my pale skin, YouTube).

In conclusion, from reviewing many sources of literature and peer reviewed books, social media advertising has become a popular influential medium but has consequences on audience self-media posting and lifestyles. Case studies that support statement- Kim Kardashian makeup product endorsement posts. However, it’s found that advert campaigns like DOVE are creating more diversity ideologies, social media creating increased globalisation so there more convergence.

REFRENCES

Hall, S. 2013. The work of representations (online), Sage Publications Inc.

Jenkins, H. 2. 2006. Worship at the altar of convergence (online), NYU Press.

Voorveld, H. and Van, G. and Muntinga, D. and Bronner, F., 2018. Engagement with Social Media and Social Media Advertising: The Differentiating Role of Platform Type. Journal of advertising (online). 47(1), 38-54.

Austin, M., 2017, An Examination of the Association of Social Media Use with the Satisfaction with Daily Routines and Healthy Lifestyle Habits for Undergraduate and Graduate Students. The Open Journal of Occupational Therapy (online). 5(4). 1-13

McAllister, M. and DeCarvalho, L., 2014, Sexualized Branded Entertainment and the Male Consumer Gaze. TripleC (online) 12(1): 299-314

Lachover, E. and Barak-Brandes, S., 2009. A beautiful campaign? Analysis of public discourses in Israel surrounding the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty. Feminist Media Studies (online). 9(3), 306-313

Bruk, D. 2017 This Model Was Fired From Louis Vuitton for Being ‘Too Fat’, Observer. Available from: https://observer.com/2017/05/model-ulrikke-louise-lahn-hoyer-fired-from-louis-vuitton-for-being-too-fat/, [Accessed 4 January 2018]

Stephens, D. and Hill, and Ronald. The Beauty Myth and Female Consumer: The Controversial Role of Advertising, Consumer Affairs (online). 28 (1), p137-153.

Saad, G., Applying Evolutionary Psychology in Understanding the Representation of Women in Advertisements. Psychology and Marketing (online). 2004. 21( 8), p593-612.

Thompson, S., 2015., Dying to be thin (video, online). Youtube; Tedx Talks. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QHL6IwY0HA&t=347s

Calderia, S. and De Ridder, S,.  2017. Representing diverse femininities on Instagram: A case study of the body-positive @effyourbeautystandards Instagram account. Catalan journal of communication & cultural studies (online) . 9 (2). 321-337

Youtube,  2018, Redefine pretty #creatorsforchange, My Pale Skin, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhDSkljh-es, [Accessed 4 January 2018]