Ever since Dove’s Real Beauty campaign reeled in great viral success, numerous powerhouse feminine care companies have started to focus their advertising on boosting the confidence of their consumers.

Rather than focusing on their products, ads have increasingly focused on a feel-good message in the hopes of lifting their brand image.

They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but what if your young daughter is the beholder and she’s being manipulated by clever, yet misleading, advertisements to form her perception? Until recently, almost all popular fashion and beauty billboards have painted long, lean and skinny women who are accessorized by expensive clothes and handbags as the beauty norm.

Skinny Water Says “Skinny Always Gets the Attention”

A recent Skinny Water advertising poster shows a lady standing before a throng of photographers with the headline “Skinny Always Gets the Attention.” Basically the message is that one assured way of getting attention is to be skinny. Normally low-calorie drink producers tend to market as a “healthy alternative” highlighting drinks that are low in calorie but high in vitamins. Skinny Water takes a completely different approach by simply saying, you need to be skinny, so drink a zero calorie drink…

In early August, Pretzel Crisp launched an an ad campaign in New York City with several slogans including “You can never be too thin”… it immediate brought anger throughout the blogsophere as a thinspiration slogan promoting unhealthy weight loss…

Sexualization of Girls Report by the APA
American Psychological Association came out with a report that shows girl as young as 4 and 5 years old are wearing new clothing styles such as push-up bras, thongs, mini skirts and other adult type outfits. Following the onslaught of media images they see on TV, there is a changing standard born out of the pressure these images give to children to “get with it” or “fit in”. This report brings up the decrease in self-esteem, the increase in depressions and eating disorders linked to the increasing sexualization by the media. It also emphasizes the increasing underage sex rate.

France: Regulate those Manipulated Pictures!
This is going to create some interesting controversy. French lawmakers have decided to regulate airbrushing photos by requiring disclaimers on photos that are photoshopped or enhanced in any way. This action was taken as a way of fighting against body image issues at the source.

This disclaimer would be needed in newspapers, photos, magazines, political pieces, product packaging, art photography.

Here in Clean Cut Media, we often discuss the media’s harmful influence on young girls. For example.
– 50% of girls already engage in negative activities such as due to self-image issues.
– 7 out of 10 girls believe they are not measuring up in some way especially in terms of looks.

This song “More Beautiful You” was written by Jonny Diaz, a young Christian man, who desired to tell women not to buy into the lies of the media and that what makes them beautiful is not external but within their heart. It’s been climbing the music charts and create a lot of buzz because of the truth in the message. It is a beautiful piece of work and the lyrics are well written.

Pro-anorexia, or sometimes called “pro-ana,” Web sites have been a common fixture in the internet world including popular social sites like Facebook. These sites have users sharing dangerous diet tips and posting pictures of very skinny girls. The purpose of these sites is to give one another “thinspiration”. Users tend to comment and posting anonymously or with a secret aliases.

In 2004, a survey by NPD Group showed that on average, girls started to use beauty products at the age of 17. Today that average is 13.

Almost across the nation 50% of young girls are engaged in negative activities such as injuring and cutting themselves or engaging in unhealthy eating habits and disorders due to self-esteem and self-image issues.

Just wanted to let you all know that the onslaught video video link was fixed. If you find any other links not working please just leave a comment and it’ll be fixed right away.
For those who might not be familiar with the onslaught video, it is the one of the video that dove created in their “beauty” campaign where they tackle the issue of media’s influence on the perception of beauty. It followed a video called “evolution” that quickly went viral and had became a huge topic of discussion. It …

 
Video focuses on a child’s face than proceeds to show seemingly a hundred ads in a matter of 20 seconds showing the “onslaught” of media that a child sees in regards to what is considered beauty. The ads vary from skin product commericals, cosmetic surgeries, diet ads, skinny models dancing, provocative ads on the streets and so on. Only 5% of children consider themselves beautiful. I am not surprised. Please be aware there are a few provocative sexual imagery shown (ex. models dancing). The clips themselves are only a fractional …