The Reality of Advertisements

Popular culture would not be the way it is now without commercials and the advertisement industry. Let’s face it, the advertisement industry is huge, and it makes its money off of the beliefs and values that are established as valuable by popular culture. Advertisements and advertisers have had a trend toward making the consumer not have as much control on their privacy, especially while being online. In the article, “Advertising Gets Personal,” the author, Samuel Greengard, makes it a point to show how exposed consumers really are when they go looking online at different websites. He does this by introducing a very intrusive thing called a “cookie.” Since most websites now have cookies to gather information about the person, advertisers have the potential to make much more money because they will have tailored their advertising to the right consumer. But that is not all, advertisers for products do not just simply say, “This product is good because it works better than all the other products,” or anything rational along those lines. Instead advertisers decide to focus on showing images that are not necessarily accurate of how a product will make you feel. For example, Coca Cola commercials always show that people are happy and friendlier when they drink Coca Cola. Is this really true? Obviously not, to be happy and friendly is an individual’s choice, not an influence of a very fizzy, dark colored beverage. But this shows how advertisers use ideas, beliefs, or notions of pleasure to sell us on the product. In some ways we become mentally dependent on the product to make us feel a certain way because we now have that product. This is a very harmful way to go about reinforcing stereotypes and status quos. I do not think there is ever a time when a person can look at an advertisement and that advertisement is not selling notions with their product.

For many women, looking into the mirror each morning can be a challenge. For me, it was a nightmare. Growing up was rough, I always saw pictures of gorgeous models, and women whose beauty surpassed that of an awkward teenager like me. Many people have heard of the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty. I first saw this advertisement when I was about thirteen, and it definitely changed my perception of me and the world around me. There have been many advertisements concerning the Dove campaign, the first one I saw was a video of the process a model’s picture goes through before it is seen by the general public. This advertisement is just of normal women showing that beauty is normal and broader than first thought. Popular culture has reinforced certain traits in a woman that determine a woman’s beauty, and on a connotative level, their value. There have since been other’s that show normal women with normal body types compared to those of the infamous Victoria’s Secret models in an effort to enforce a new acceptance for more than one type of beauty than what is stereotypically considered beautiful.

The Dove Campaign for Real Beauty has come to influence younger girls from developing a toxic idea of body image and trying to change the popular cultural ideas surrounding what body image is ideal. This add definitely reinforces the concept that more than one does not have to starve themselves, or be upset about not being a size ‘0,’ ‘2,’ ‘4,’ or even ’10,’ that they can still be beautiful even though they may not conform to popular cultures ideal women’s dress size. That a woman can feel good about herself despite her size.

 

How Pop Culture Effects Us

In the article by LeRoy Ashby, The Rise of Popular Culture: A Historiographical Sketch, it was said that powerful groups create their own culture. Reflecting on what I have learned about popular culture I realized this statement is still true. However, today it is a struggle over more things, to be the most twitted, to have the most money, the most prestige or power. I can list many more items, but it always stays the same: those who are popular control the development of culture, and how people perceive the world around them. The example given in the article was that of minstrelsy. White men would imitate black people and create an image that was a damaging stereotype, and gave the people who watched the performances the wrong impression about black people and the South. That effect is still seen today through popular culture only highlighting one aspect of an idea, nation, or anything else, allowing for misunderstandings.