Dystopian Controls
How do advertisements affect us?
Corporate Control
Our society’s concept of beauty is created by corporations. Companies advertise impossible standards for people to live up to. Consumers buy into the products in hope of reaching those standards. Several resources explain and exemplify the control that corporations have on society. The concept of beauty is molded by these corporations.
Advertisements can heavily influence our perception of beauty. In magazines, companies use photoshop to alter the models' appearances. By doing this, brains see perfection, which in reality is an unattainable standard. This video shows skilled artists photoshopping an image of pizza into a beautiful woman. Why would companies try to trick their most “valuable” customers into believing in false perfection? Perfection sells. Using photoshop to achieve an ideal body or beautiful face promotes insecurity in people. Companies feed off of that insecurity in order to sell their products. By showing the ideal man or woman wearing, eating or possessing a particular item, it creates an idea that the consumer can achieve the same standard as the model.
A popular yotuber, Anna Akana produced a short film, Affliction Inc. The short film began with several women sitting in a conference. The women talk about how to get people to buy their products. One woman reluctantly brings forth a new idea. “The industry will photoshop women to impossible standards, and in turn those women will be fed an unrealistic image to strive for.” She later points out that the company is evil for creating afflictions for their consumers. The message conveyed through this video is so important. Due to the advertisements plastered everywhere, peoples’ minds turn to dark places. They believe that the model in magazine is the ideal person, and they are inferior. Eating disorders to achieve unhealthy thinness, plastic surgery to match society’s standards and suicide for those who couldn’t stand not to be perfect, that is what unachievable standards do to people.
There are many people in this world that buy into advertisements, hoping for perfection. Beating themselves up over not being what society wants them to be is something people are guilty of, at least one time in their lives. The motives behind the corporations are fair, but the way they trick consumers is inhuman. People of every shape and size are beautiful, especially without photoshop.