By: Japneet Sandhu
Brand endorsements are one of the primary ways through which individuals often develop insecurities about themselves. Society's expectations and constant depiction of "one size fit all" models influence audiences consuming the content.“At least one person dies from an eating disorder every 62 minutes in America. Eating disorders can affect anyone regardless of gender, age, ethnicity or culture” (Recovery Village, 2020). The main inducement is usually endorsements. After seeing an ideal figure being presented to several audiences, people often adopt maladaptive eating habits to look like them. This can lead to eating disorders like Anorexia Nervosa and Bulimia. Individuals start to feel as if their bodies are not accepted and are not attractive. To lose weight, both males and females may limit their diet to look like these models. “Comparison women were not affected by the nature of the photographs that they saw, but eating-disordered women were - they overestimated more when they had seen the pictures of women than when they saw photographs of neutral objects” (Cambridge University Press, 2018). Women suffering from eating disorders were easily swayed whereas other women weren’t as affected. This portrays how whatever is being shown can impact your mental health and self-esteem. However, how realistic is this? Is the public putting their physical and mental health at risk to obtain an unrealistic and unnatural image? The physical appearances presented in brand endorsements like Gucci, Louis Vuitton, or Nike create a powerful divide in the population based on body dissatisfaction.
Another key example of how brand endorsements heavily impact physical insecurities is diet pills. Models like Kim Kardashian often promote detox pills or shakes that are supposedly going to “cleanse” the body. Although these pills may, to some extent, cause weight loss, they also rid the gut of key microbiota and nutrients. The models who advocate for these pills have a whole team of doctors and personal trainers who are watching their every move and who is to say that they use these pills? The general public does not have these same advantages and can often suffer from over-usage of these pills to enhance their bodily appearance and strengthen their self-esteem. Brand endorsements also misguide their audience through distorted perceptions of what an ideal model looks like. One of the main methods used by brand outlets is Photoshop. This will display models with clear skin, a slim waist and thicker thighs. With these characteristics presented, individuals who deviate from this ideal are considered unacceptable or dissatisfactory. It is very unrealistic and makes it seem like this is what models look like in real life. As models like Gigi Hadid and Kim Kardashian begin to infiltrate media outlets like Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat with photoshoots, young females begin to develop a body complex that can lead to mental health illnesses like anxiety and depression. The pressure of having a “perfect or “ideal” body doesn’t only affect the audience and societies but it also affects models themselves.
Let's look at singer Zayn Malik, for example, he suffered from an eating disorder a few years back. He was open about his disorder, media pressure, and his mental state at the time. In an interview with Sunday Times Style, Malik stated "People saw strength in that, and they didn't seem to expect it from a guy, but they expect it from a female, which to me is crazy," (Men’s Health, 2017). He talked about how the public was aghast to see that coming from him because he’s a male. This exemplifies how often society perceives men when it comes to eating disorders and mental health disorders. There are several celebrities and models that aren’t open about it because eating disorders and mental illnesses are stigmatized and it changes the way the audience views their “idealized bodies.”
During an experiment with a model and individual, researchers found that “Restrained eaters tended to feel worse and eat less in the average size condition compared to the thin model condition” (science direct, 2008). Whatever gets shown to you whether it be on social media or TV ads, it’s always portrayed in a manner to make you fall for the product and become a consumer. Society nowadays believes they can follow diets and restrictions, as well as look exactly like the model but the endorsers used are always unrealistic and hard to look like in real life.
Works cited
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