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Opinion

Ads should better represent audience

Jesse Singh
Opinion Columnist

From the time you wake to the moment you lie down, advertisements bombard you without fail. This may seem like a gross overstatement, but advertisements can even be found in the material we choose to read.

And these aren't even realistically portrayed advertisements in the least. They subtlety prey on our insecurities, regardless of the product, company, event, so on and so forth. Instead, the people portrayed are usually above average in the sense of conventional beauty.

But last time I checked, between 25 to 33 percent of America is overweight. Sadly, the overweight and obese are only portrayed commercially for comic relief. It would be a welcome sight to see the overweight on billboards or T.V. actually advertising a product and not a Subway sandwich or the other gazillion ways to lose weight.

Even Dove, the company that campaigns for "real" or "natural" beauty, still portrays women who do not look like the majority of women you see everyday. It is an absurd double standard, because more conventional looking men can be found in beer, Arby's and many other commercials. But double standards are an entirely different subject.

Aside from the discrimination facing the overweight, advertisements only show people with the smoothest, unblemished faces. And the only time a less-than-perfect face shown is to illustrate how to look like the accepted, smooth-faced population.

Even in church advertisements, which seek to draw in more members, only the attractive are shown, even though the commercial keeps pushing slogans such as "we're just like you."

Though advertisements are incredibly unrealistic, they're made with the intention of representing their product, company, event, etc in the best light. 

The people in these advertisements are usually better looking than average to make their representation more appealing to the eye. In fact, I don't know that I have ever been to Wal-Mart and encountered an employee who looked remotely close to the ones in the commercial or had half the pep.

Our image of beauty may not only be the media's fault, but rather something more innate. Babies respond to more appealing images of people on the basis of symmetry. This is not only confined to Western culture, as people tend to agree on the same standards of beauty, even cross-culturally.

The problem regarding these advertisements is our habituation towards them. 

We'll continue to see only the skinny in McDonalds commercials, and only the lean and toned will be featured in 24-Hour Fitness ads. We see them all the time and by now, we generally don't give a damn.

Singh, an opinion columnist for The Daily Cougar, 
can be reached at omni_dragonrage@hotmail.com.