Advertisement Essay on the Influence of the Media on Young Teenagers Today

Essay by Anonymous UserA-, September 2006

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Advertising is a powerful tool used by the media to portray an image, change an idea or shape an attitude. They draw on the attitudes and values of which people hold in society. They promote particular beliefs and ways of thinking. However, many of these do not have a great outcome towards the people of society.

One of the common attitudes present in advertising, that surround many young people today, is the attitude towards the ideal of being thin and slim. However, this ideal is almost always hard to reach and the attitudes surrounding this body image are very strong. The media has greatly shaped these attitudes to successfully produce their products. Thus, companies portray girls with slim, beautiful and perfect stereotypes to promote products successfully to the target audience. Usually for this ideal, the target audience is teenage girls. Diet, face, body and skin advertisements are almost always present in teenage girl magazines and many of the advertisements portray a girl with the ideal body image to sell their product.

The girls within the target audience will see the advertisement and feel the pressure of owning the features of the perfect model promoting the product. Thus, this will cause the girls to assume that the product will somehow make them as perfect as the advertising model. This will then contribute to the sale of the product and profit of the company. Although good for the company, this is never good for the people of society. Through company advertisements such as these, the ideal that women must be thin to be considered beautiful is portrayed to many insecure women in our society. This can then lead to problems such as eating disorders and excessive dieting in society's young women. Many people argue that the cause of the increase in these...