Reflective Writing by Celia Dann

THE EFFECTS FASHION EDITORIAL ADVERTISEMENTS HAVE ON THE CONSUMER

REFLECTIVE WRITING CELIA DANN | N0365787 FASHION COMMUNICATION AND PROMOTION YEAR 2 COMMUNICATION AND MESSAGE MODULE FASH20031

During this semester we have been researching into how the fashion industry communicates notions of beauty and identity to the public. I have looked at the way the media’s perception of the ‘ideal’ (tall, slim, young - see Figure 1) has been affecting the consumer’s health and self-esteem, and the consequences this has had. Professionals within this industry conduct how fashion is communicated to the consumer, and as an aspiring professional myself, it is important that I research into the responsibilities I hold when communicating these ideals. Fashion is promoted in the media through various different methods including advertising, visual merchandising, styling and photography. I have decided to look in depth at advertising in fashion magazines, to explore the effects it has on women. I aim to discover the role fashion advertisements play in communicating with the consumer and the power that images have had in portraying strong brand messages.

Figure 1. An editorial image of Victoria Secret Model’s, 2010.

So what is Fashion communication and promotion? Fashion communication is one of the most successful fields of mass communication. It uses various methods to communicate with the public in general and to specific consumers. It uses several modes to reach out to audiences through advertisement, films, videos, print etc. As Valerie Lloyd (1986:5), a respected photographic curator, states ‘Women’s magazines have become one of the most reliable and consistent growth areas in commercial publishing this century’. If a brand wants to promote itself, advertising in print is one of the best ways to make sure they are publicising themselves most effectively to their target audience. Lloyd (1986:12) continues ‘Magazines are aimed at specific target audiences and can thus produce remarkable accurate information on the aspirations and preoccupations of generations of women readers’. The information she is referring to is suggesting that women’s fashion trends change solely because of what women see and are therefore inspired by in magazines. It is not only garments that are promoted through fashion editorial advertising however, but also the cultural perception of beauty.

The average person sees up to eight thousand advertisements each and everyday. From television ads to billboards in cities, the media all around us changes our individual perceptions of beauty. From the way we dress to the weight that we must be in order to feel ‘pretty’, we are told everything that we must do in order to be beautiful in the eyes of our peers. Nancy Honey (1990:2), renowned American fashion photographer, states, ‘A woman must continually watch herself. She is almost continually accompanied by her own image of herself, whilst she is walking across a room or whilst she is weeping at the death of her father, she can scarcely avoid envisaging walking or weeping. From earliest childhood she has been taught and persuaded to survey herself continually’. To many women, their appearance is extremely important, whether they want to follow the latest trends or not. One of the best ways of doing this is through fashion magazines. American Vogue, the largest selling fashion magazine in the world, claims to have ‘always tried to present the most attractive, elegant and seductive vision of women.’ However over time it is clear to see that what is accepted in society as ‘beauty’ constantly changes. Alexander Liberman (1979:7), an editor for 32 years at Condé Nast Publications, explains that after World War Two ‘The thinner, less “feminine” the model’s body, the more she could act out a graphic grotesque of limbs incredibly quartered in space.’ (See Figure 2. The first example of a ‘skinny’ model being on the cover). Previously to the war, the models used in Vogue were curvaceous and embodied a ‘womanly’ figure. This introduction of new, skinnier models into fashion magazines slowly changed into what has now become the norm.

Liberman (1979:8) furthers his argument by stating that ‘The destruction of women was not only the photographer’s doing; the dress designers created abstract preconceived shapes arbitrarily superimposed on a woman’s real form.’ When the latest fashions were designed to fit a different body shape, a new message about body size started being communicated to the consumer.

Figure 2. Cover of American Vogue, August 1940.

One of the most effective ways to see the effects advertisements have had on the consumer is to look into specific advertisement campaigns. An example of a rejection to societies perception of beauty is the ‘Real Beauty’ campaign by Dove. Based on the findings from a global study they undertook, ‘The Real Truth About Beauty: A Global Report’, Dove launched a campaign for ‘Real Beauty’ in 2004. The campaign raised awareness about the need for a wider definition of beauty after the study proved the hypothesis that the definition of beauty had become (Dove Website: online) ‘limiting and unattainable’. Among the study’s findings was the statistic that only 2 percent of women around the world would describe themselves as beautiful. This is likely to be because women compared themselves to images they see in advertisements. Since 2004, Dove employed various methods of communication to challenge beauty stereotypes and invited women to join a discussion about beauty. In 2010, Dove furthered their campaign and launched another branch of it. The aim of this was to make beauty a source of confidence, not anxiety, with the ‘Dove Movement for Self-Esteem’. The ‘Real Beauty’ campaign focused on the idea that girls are bombarded with unrealistic images by the media and images of ‘beauty’ that impact their self-esteem. The brand teamed up with the entertainment industry to show that what girls see in movies and magazines represents an unrealistic standard of beauty. An example of one of the adverts used in the campaign is shown here in Figure 3.

Figure 3. Advertisement for Dove’s ‘Real Beauty’ Campaign, 2004.

However this campaign has been heavily criticised. For instance in the series Dove asked viewers to phone in to vote on whether a woman on a billboard was ‘fat’ or ‘fab’. The results were then posted in real-time onto the board. Despite a photo in the October 2004 issue of Marketing Magazine showing ‘fab’ leading 51 percent to 49 percent (not a huge divide anyway), eventually the percentage of fat votes overtook fab. Jennifer Pozner, Executive Director of Women in Media & News, backs up this criticism of the campaign by insinuating that Dove only used larger women in their advertisement to promote their new line of anti-aging products which was about to be released.

‘… despite the company’s continued and commendable intent to expand notions of female beauty to include the non-skinny and non-white, Dove’s attempts are profoundly limited by a product line that comes with its own underlying philosophy: cellulite is unsightly, women’s natural aging process is shameful, and flabby thighs are flawed and must be fixed … oh, so conveniently by Dove’s newest lotion’ Pozner (2005:online). When the media creates a perception of beauty which is hard for the average woman to achieve, it means that the consumer has to buy into new products released which then become seen as essential (for example antiaging creams). For instance, when the fashion is to have straight hair, the rise in the number of hair straighteners sold explodes. This process is called empathic design, which is a design approach that pays attention to consumer’s feelings toward a product. It is an observation and its goal is to identify consumer needs in order to create products that the customers don’t even know they want. Consumers can have difficulty in envisioning these new products, usually due to lack of familiarity with them or because they are still locked in an old mind-set. Advertising works by convincing the consumer out of their old mind-set and encouraging them to try these new products, which in turn will make them ‘beautiful’. Although it can be argued that images of underweight models shouldn’t be used in advertisements because of the damaging affects it has on the consumers self-esteem, it has to be considered whether is it just as unhealthy to promote a body image which is overweight and to encourage the consumer to start piling on the pounds. After all, between 2009-10 it was recorded that above a third (35.9 percent) of adults aged 20 years and over in the US were obese. (CDC/National Centre for Health Statistics, 2011:online).

Not only does the notion of beauty have an effect on women, but it also affects the way in which women think men see them and what a male perceives as beautiful. English art critic John Berger (1972), remarked that ‘the surveyor of a woman within herself is male’. It has become a problem to think about how women might ‘look’ at images then at themselves and identify with a masculine point of view, which thereby reinforces male stereotypes of women. So what do men consider beautiful in women? Most of us believe men only see looks as beautiful simply because the media encourages us to think this. The media advertises busty females with perfect bodies, or skinny little models posing in underwear and designer clothing and women automatically think ‘The woman of every man`s dreams’. However if you ask a lot of men many believe that women with ‘perfect’ bodies and skinny models are far from his dream girl. I decided to produce an online survey to try and discover what men find beautiful. I wanted to see, for example, if men preferred women with an average size body and curves to those whose bodies bared more bone than fat; like the models we see in adverts in fashion magazines. The results concluded that it was actually a woman’s personality that men considered most beautiful. One participant described ‘to me a woman with self-confidence is beautiful’. Kind, caring and sincere were three other attributes that were also considered beautiful. When it came to physical attributes, the results showed men were most interested in eyes. Some men also confessed that women with natural average-sized breasts were more beautiful than women with breast implants. What underwear did they find beautiful on a woman? Surprisingly, average and feminine was a more popular choice than the skimpy erotic garments found on models in most editorial magazines. I think the most surprising part of the results was that men thought women with natural makeup looked more beautiful than women who wear a lot. Although the results of my small survey won’t necessarily change the way in which women view themselves, the next question that needs to be asked is - what could change the way in which notions of beauty are being communicated? Something needs to change so that women don’t feel the pressure to like the models used in fashion magazines. I believe the biggest step would be to change the models they use. The answer is not to go to the extremes and use overweight models, similarly to the ones used in the Dove campaigns, but to start introducing models with different body shapes and different races into advertisements.

Race is a huge talking point in the fashion industry. In July 2008, Italian Vogue released an issue that featured only black models, photographed by Steven Meisel. The magazine claimed to showcase black models in response to anger caused by the lack of fashion magazines unwilling to display black models on their covers. Fashion industry insiders claim black models are featured less often because they are unable to sell. This specific issue also brought in Toccara Jones, the first black plus-sized model to be in the pages of the high fashion magazine. Instead of the issue not selling, it became the highest selling issues of Italian Vogue ever, and had run out of print twice, which marked the first time in Condé Nast history that the magazine reprinted an issue to satisfy demand. The reprinted copies had the tag lines: ‘Most Wanted Issue Ever’ and ‘First Reprint’ banded across the front. However, even though the advertising pages went up 30 percent, there was a “glaring lack of black models” in them. Meisel (2008:online) said: “I’ve asked my advertising clients so many times, ‘Can we use a black girl?’ They say no. Advertisers say black models don’t sell’. I think that in my role as a fashion communicator, I should be encouraging the use of models of different ethnicities in advertisements. However I don’t believe one ‘all-black’ issue of Vogue is the way to do this. You should be able to flick through fashion magazines and look at adverts that have black models in and focus on what they are advertising, as supposed to being in shock because you’ve seen a black model in a magazine.

Figure 4. Tyra Banks in Vogue Italia ‘all-black issue’, 2009.

Fine artists have also joined the backlash against the socially perceived idea of beauty, for example Jenny Saville, who’s work I’ve looked closely at during this semester. She is a contemporary British painter known for her largescale painted depictions of naked women. Saville’s focus is on the female body but she also paints large scale paintings of transgender people. Her published sketches and documents include surgical photographs of liposuction, trauma victims, deformity correction, disease states and transgender patients. Saville is not afraid to draw something that is not beautiful. If people don’t like her work because it’s not ‘pretty’ to look at, then they are not understanding the messages of her paintings correctly. By painting subjects not traditionally seen as beautiful, artists like Saville have caused people again to question what is beautiful.

Figure 5. ‘Rubin’s Flap’ by Jenny Saville, 1999.

After looking in depth at how the fashion industry communicates notions of beauty and identity to the consumer, I’ve learnt that is does effect women’s self-esteem massively. Brands promote the media’s perception of beauty because at the end of the day, they want their look-enhancing products to sell. Although there have been backlashes against the notion of beauty shown in advertisements (examples shown through the all-black issue of Italian Vogue and fine artists such as Jenny Saville), magazines are still using the same white, underweight models. It’s important that as fashion communicator I help to publicise the fact that this isn’t the image of beauty men perceive, and that normal women have no need to feel inferior to the women in used in fashion editorial magazines.

REFERENCES BERGER, J., 1972, Ways of Seeing, Penguin CDC/NATIONAL CENTRE FOR HEALTH STATISTICS, 2011, Available at http://www.cdc.gov/ nchs/fastats/overwt.htm [Accessed: Monday 21 January 2013] DOVE Website, Available at http://www.dove.us/Social-Mission/campaign-for-real-beauty. aspx [Accessed: Monday 21 January 2013] HONEY, N., 1990, Woman to Woman, Hexagon Editions LIBERMAN, A., DEVLIN, P., FEITLER, B., DIANA, E., 1979, Vogue Book of Fashion Photography, The Condé Nast Publications Ltd. LLOYD, V., 1986, The Art of Vogue Photographic Covers, The Condé Nast Publications Ltd. MEISEL, S., 2008, Available at http://www.imes.com/2008/06/19/fashion/19BLACK. html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 [Accessed: Monday 21 January 2013] POZNER, J., 2005, Available at http://www.wimnonline.org/articles/dovebacklash.html [Accessed: Tuesday 22 January 2013]

BIBLIOGRAPHY GREENFIELD, L., 2002, Girl Culture, Chronicle Books LLC SCHARMA, S., 2005, The Saatchi Gallery, Available at http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artists/jenny_saville.htm [Accessed: Wednesday 23 January 2013]

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS FIGURE 1. An editorial image of Victoria Secret Model’s, 2010, Available at http://wallpaperswide.com/victoria_secret_models-wallpapers.html [Accessed: Monday 21 January 2013] FIGURE 2. Cover of American Vogue, August 1940, Available at http://www.vogue.co.uk/magazine/archive/issue/1940/August [Accessed: Monday 21 January 2013] FIGURE 3. Advertisement for Dove’s ‘Real Beauty’ Campaign, 2004, Available at http://www.brandchannel.com/home/post/2012/10/18/Dove-Real-Beauty-Girls-101812. aspx [Accessed: Tuesday 22 January 2013] FIGURE 4. Tyra Banks in Vogue Italia ‘all-black issue’, 2009. Available at http://maisonchaplin.blogspot.co.uk/2010_02_01_archive.html#.UQFFO6FvwmY [Accessed: Wesnesday 23 January] FIGURE 5. ‘Rubin’s Flap’ by Jenny Saville, 1999, Available at http://www.guardian.co.uk/ artanddesign/gallery/2012/jun/10/jenny-saville-paintings-oxford-solo-show#/?picture=3913 14839&index=8 [Accessed Wednesday 23 January 2013]