Victoria Secret Advertisement: What Makes A Woman Beautiful?

Who decides what makes a woman beautiful? The ideals of beauty have changed throughout history. For example, Renaissance painters idolized a fuller figured women, in the nineteen fifties the curvy Marilyn Monroe was the symbol of feminine beauty, there was the waifish women of the nineteen sixties and then there was Kate Moss in the heroin chic of the nineteen nineties. A lot of advertisements today are showing women what they are ideally supposed to look like. With all of these advertisements out there it has become even harder now for people to not pass superficial judgment based on our societal standard concepts of beauty. These beauty ideals are extremely harmful to young girls and women of all ages because they promote unrealistic physical …show more content…
For, as determined in the Victoria Secret advertisement you are to be young, tall, mostly white, and to have an exceptionally perfect body. All of this is features are promoted by the big bold caption in the middle of the advertisement stating, "A body for everybody", which is ironic considering that the women represented in the advertisement all have a sense of sameness and uniformity in how they all look. Even the few women in the ad who are of a different race all "look" white. They have similar facial features and body types as the other who are white giving them a similar appearance. Not only that but the ad is lacking in women who are of different body types, heights and ages. Leaving many female viewers to have feeling of inferiority, self-consciousness, and to develop body image …show more content…
Bringing about this need to compete is not only for receiving male attention but also keeping it. All around there are advertising and magazine articles that showing pictures of beautiful women. They are basically telling women that this your competition, this what you want to not only meet but also to you need to be better. Such as with the Victoria Secret, which shows these beautiful women in lingerie and there is a caption at the bottom that says "Find your Favorite". Which brings the question is it asking about the lingerie or is it asking about which model you prefer? Where in a sense the ad is making the models compete with each other for the attention or the approval the masses. You have some of the models looking playful and friendly. While the others have more of serious pose and they are looking straight at the viewer. No matter who you are it is hard to compete with "perfect" women in advertisements today because of the use of airbrushing and even some advertisers use parts of women to create a whole new model. It is this rivalry between women is harming not only our individual values and self-esteem but females as a