Demonstrable demographics

To be honest I am a little dumbfounded this week in regards to my classmate’s blog posts. There seemed to be an overwhelming idea that yes adds do work and that they are properly marketed towards the demographics that my classmates are contained in. There seemed to be a great deal of similarities between how I viewed the marketing strategies of companies being based off of gender and sexualisation of  genders and gender roles. However I was not expecting everyone to say that they were properly marketed towards through these adds.

There were many blogs that talked about how these adds reflect societal norms, and through those norms the company begins to be seen as a way to be accepted. As is the case with Grace Burgoyne's blog where she said "Girls also want to portray a popular social image, Victoria Secret is hailing those girls and giving them an opportunity to dress socially acceptable and desirable. With few words the ad pulled me in and made me feel like an acceptable woman in society(http://souspression.weebly.com/blog.html)". I was not expecting such an apathetic view on socialization and sexualisation from my classmates. These representations of a socially accepted person, mainly in this case woman, is troubling and not all that accurate in representing woman. It presents the idea that we are no more than our clothes, and that is how we should treat ourselves. There was a blog by Cassandra Graham where she talked about the effectiveness of a cover girl add, in response she said  "I particularly like Cover Girl because it targets young females to use this product, however, it is a line of cosmetics that embraces natural, light beauty! (http://cassandragrahamblog.wordpress.com)". I know this blog post is not supposed to be about whether or not I buy into these adds, it is about whether or not they are effective, which is apparently yes they are. I was not expecting such a pro commercialism response, which is not the point of this blog post, but the point of this blog post is do I think these representations are real. In response to that I have to say no, these representations of a makeup product presenting the natural light beauty of a woman, so long as you have makeup on as being a real representation.

There is a great deal of idealizing a body present in all these adds, and my classmates pointed out that this is an effective advertising technique. Keenan Beaumont talks about the effect that sports advertising has on him when he says "It is when we feel as if we are missing something, that the company presents us with their product, which is supposed to improve our performance and turn us into successful athletes like the ones we idolize.(http://keenbeau80.wordpress.com)" I understand the idea that we idolize those that have succeeded in the past, that seems like a good marketing strategy to get those idols to push a product. So representing an athlete as someone who wants to get better makes sense, the representation there is accurate. There are other social implications to using a face to sell a product that had nothing to do with past success, but the demographic appears to be properly hailed.

There may be no place in this here for my opinion on whether or not these representations are good for those being represented but I have to say something. The common theme between many blogs was that of the ideal figure and attaining it to get status or acceptance. This alone is something I could handle by just being annoyed, there was something else though, a pseudo self-aware apathy involved. I think the best example of what I read was said by Lauren Sterling "Ultimately since I have been brought up within a world that operates this way, I feel that these advertisements and ways of hailing me to a specific message are successful most of the time.(http://lostirling.wordpress.com)" This is saying that the representations are false, yet because I have been raised into them I should accept them and follow them. I do not believe that any representation in these advertisements was correct in its showing of gender or idealism, but this apathy towards these inaccuracies or life dumbfounds me.