Did I do a good job? I think you can clearly see I do not take this very seriously. She's hot.
If you're just here to troll the people actually trying to talk, then why bother?
I definitely don't buy your idea that cover girls are role models in a way that actresses, singers, TV personalities, politicians or athletes are. And your complaint of photoshop use doesn't apply to those since they appear in more than just photographs.
Oh, they're not; they're role models
within their specific roles. Being a role model doesn't seem that you're someone to look up to in general; that's why the word "role" is in there to begin with. When I say "role model" I mean they're there to provide examples within the realm of fashion and attractiveness; when it comes to those things, those models are what is presented to strive for. They're role models when it comes to being attractive and looking good. Obviously they don't mean as much outside of that.
But are you saying it's somehow morally wrong? Irresponsible? Given how subtle and disparate the effects, if any, are, I have a real hard time considering the publication of magazines with photoshopped hotchicks on the cover to be in the category of what I would call morally wrong. Socially irresponsible maybe, but for me that designation would come more from the promotion of useless trash that's manufactured at some harm to the environment.
The effects (which I think I've established already, but feel free to do your own research, if you care) are a part of a larger system at work. It's not just magazine covers, it's the entire industry and how our society views attractiveness in general.
I think it's been established well-enough that the way media portrays women does in fact harm women especially by promoting unhealthy body image and unreasonable self-expectation, and when an industry/company produces something that they know has significantly harmful effects for the sake of their own profit, that's both socially irresponsible
and morally wrong.
Speaking of bringing up children, before I'd have anything to say about magazine publishers, I'd put the primary responsibility on parents and communities to raise children who are able to maintain their self-worth despite seeing photoshopped pictures of models at the checkout line.
Of course, but there are a couple issues with that:
- Those parents were also raised in a society that taught them to be like that, so there's a good enough chance they won't be liable to teach their own children differently; it's self-perpetuating in this way, like most of culture is. Of course, there are still other influences on children, so you'd have to look at and encourage those to do the right thing as well here.
- If society were made of people with a good sense of self-worth, with a lesser tendency to idolize these things, those magazines wouldn't sell to begin with. This is sort of beside the point, though.
- Encouraging parents to raise their children correctly in this way necessitates admitting that these things can have a negative effect in the first place.
True, although that reminds me of some research I heard about...I forget where, but probably referenced in a Steven Pinker book. Basically, it found that as women's wealth and social status rises, the status and wealth of their imagined desired mate also rose. This indicated that rather than women just wanting to marry wealthy or high-ranking men as a back-door way to get wealth and status themselves, instead there is something integral about status and power that women look for in mates.
That's interesting, but you'd have to look at the converse of that too: Would men do exactly the same? It's possible that men simply haven't looked for economic status in women as much because that hasn't really been in an issue in a lot of societies due to how traditional gender roles have tended to work. As we get used to women having more of that, who's to say men won't look for it as well in
their relationships?
The basic effect you described seems relatively obvious to me, though: If someone is looking for economic status, and their own is higher, then they'll have higher standards to start.
I don't use the phrase "in our society" for things that appear in all human societies (as compiled, conveniently for social scientists of all stripes, in the book "Human Universals" by Donald Brown, 1990). The phrase gets on my nerves a little bit when people throw it around regarding things that are true in every society, such as looks being a bigger asset to women than to men, since it tends to carry with it the assumption that it's NOT the same in every society
I'm considering current trends and their possible outcomes as well. Traditional gender roles have obviously been around for a long time and have been similar in most places (to a fairly high degree), so a lot of things would seem like universals, but in modern times, these things are changing in ways that they typically
haven't changed before, so I don't want to make many assumptions, since a lot of the differences between what men and women look for in mates can still easily be ascribed to culture, especially gender roles.
Well, the notion that selling somebody something that isn't necessarily good for them is wrong, is a hell of a thing to argue. You'd probably say it holds for cigarettes (and the case for the sale of cigarettes being morally wrong holds a lot more weight than the sale of fashion magazines) but what about SUVs? What about pornography? Movie tickets? Computer games?
It depends. There are a lot of factors involved, and it's
not a trivial problem to think about. You have to consider what uses the product has, how it influences social problems, and how serious those problems are.
Cigarettes, for example, contribute to some pretty hefty, seriousy, and common problems without providing a hell of a lot in return; I'd call advertising cigarettes morally wrong, yes.
The thing about the current subject is that bad self-image is a common and serious problem itself, even amongst those who don't necessarily have an eating disorder or other incredibly serious effects from it. Like someone else in this channel said, it's also largely unconscious: Even girls who
know that it's all bullshit can still be affected by it; such is the power of social pressure.
Now, obviously I'm not going to say that there's no actual usage for commercial fashion or cosmetic advertisements or anything like that, but they could do it in a
more responsible fashion. You can advertise make-up or fashion in ways that have less deleterious effects (one of the studies I linked to explicitly studied the differences depending on, say, what sort of slogan is used). You don't have to photoshop models or airbrush the living hell out of them, either, and you can show girls with more than one (two, tops) types of body structure, or hell, maybe even ones of normal weight.
So yeah, when thinking about the kind of stuff you're mentioning, you have to consider what uses the product has, what negative effects it has (and how serious they are and what problems they feed into), and whether or not the industry is doing what it can to contribute the product and its uses to society while at least attempting to do so in a way that
doesn't contribute to serious problems. Remember Joe Camel, or other alcohol and cigarette advertisement campaigns that came under fire a while back? The issue wasn't that people were selling alcohol and cigarettes, it's that they were glorifying it in the wrong way, presenting it unrealistically, and trying to subtly target demographics irresponsibly (especially children).
It's not a question of telling people they're wrong for wanting to make money or sell a useful product; it's whether or not they're doing it in a way that's
unduly harmful when it needn't be.
Actually, that reminds me. This whole thing about whether fashion magazines are bad or not has an exact analogue in the whole "do video games cause violence in children" thing. If video games DO cause violence (which is just as hard to prove as that fashion ads cause anorexia) then we don't blame the game maker, we assume something is wrong with the person, and their parents if applicable. I don't really see a substantial difference between the situations.
Except there's a lot of actual evidence of fashion modeling and advertisements (and the way they're made and presented) causing self-image problems, and it's obvious that, regardless of that, self-image problems are common to begin with. There is much less evidence that violent videogames beget violence; the best evidence is that they might desensitize people to it. How bad that is depends on who you ask, I guess.
Now, if there were a huge issue with violent activity amongst children in this country
and there were significant studies showing that videogames incite this in them,
and that the videogame companies were trying to sell it to these people with that goal as an implicit part of the process, it would be more similar.
Still, could anyone but the most deluded space cadet see reality as less real than the cover of Cosmo?
Eh, I don't think it's about "less real", more "less ideal". When people see other people in real life, they're just other people. Magazines and the like present an image of what people
ought to be like, from the consumer's prospective. It's this strange mythical ideal which, while fairly unreal, is presented as something that is and that should be idolized.
And don't discount people's ability to consider media-driven examples more profound than real life. It happens more than you'd think, unfortunately; how many people listen to talk radio, after all?
"No messing with people's heads just to buy shit" is a pretty good starting point for individuals and groups alike.
But that applies to all advertising and sale of all products besides extremely basic food and other necessities. How far do you want to take that?
That's why there are regulations in place; even the people who sell Cheerio's came under fire recently for the claims regarding how the cereal can positively affect health.
Of course, regulations can't do everything considering how much grey area there is, and this is very much one of those. I think it's more an issue where social awareness of it needs to be increased to the point where magazines will no longer be
inclined to do this. Make people aware of how they're being messed with, and it doesn't work quite as well anymore, and if you make them care about something else (like, say, having self-esteem or what-have-you) then industries will cater specifically to that instead, as they follow the changing social trend.
Pornography is not realistic, and it does contribute to a false image. However, it is possible to enjoy exquisite pornography and still have a realistic perception of women. It's just that most people are pre-disposed to being asshats that have a hard time sorting fantasy from reality which in turn screws with their expectations.
People aren't really taught very well to sort fantasy from reality sometimes, that much is definitely true.
The thing about porn, though, is that it's just that: It's fantasy. It's fiction. Media portrayals of fashion idols and the like are presented as not only real, but ideal. It's like comparing a fantasy novel about a really kickass guy to a biography of a really kickass guy except some of the details were fudged to make him look a lot better and have him technically fighting a war in two completely different places if you read into it enough.
I do apologize for the wall-of-text posts, though. It's just hard for me to stop saying things sometimes.