How have I been personally affected by the use of models in advertising such as Victoria's Secret? Very little, except that I find it spawns discussions in which I feel men are being unfairly judged.
From an advertising standpoint the use of those models to sell products is done to generate sales among the target audience. Namely women. Men might buy things from Victoria's Secret or look at the ads. But the vast majority of sales come from women and that is who the ads are targeted at. Furthermore, the decisions to run these ads and use these models are GENERALLY not made by heterosexual, male executives. Rather this is an industry run by women and homosexual men for women.
Fine fine. Sales are sales. But what about the psychological effects of these ads on American women and girls? It can be harmful, I won't argue that. Many women have serious body image issues. Issues that stem from their own sense of competition with all women they see and their ideas about what men want. They see these ads and the models in them as being representative of the pinnacles of femininity. As such, this must be what men want and what they must become to be beautiful. And that is where the harm is, since most women cannot ever look like those models.
So, many women feel unattractive, undesirable, and unfeminine. Which they rightly feel is unfair. But which they seldom realize is also fundamentally untrue. Because it is very likely that the men around them feel they are attractive, desirable, and feminine…
Oh but what about Playboy? That is a men’s magazine targeted at men and what men want, right? Well, almost. We men are intensely visual creatures. We respond to our environment first from a visual standpoint. That includes sexual attraction. There are visual cues and traits that we are drawn to, signs of reproductive health, vitality, etc. that we make snap judgments about from what we see. This happen automatically, very quickly, and without any conscious thought. Those women in “men’s magazines†are caricatures of those signals men instinctively notice. But that does not then make them exactly what men want.
There have been studies done on that very subject by people far better informed and smarter than I am. But the end result is very much the same. Men want a woman who looks healthy, young, shapely, feminine, and nothing like a man. Some models fit that description, but not all. Generally, men marry and WANT TO MARRY women who would be overweight by those artificial standards so many women believe in.
But if that is true, why do men look at these models and magazines? For the very same reasons that women read romance novels, watch movies like “Shakespeare In Loveâ€, or like romantic candlelit dinners. Our attraction to the exaggerated female form is very much like women’s attraction to “Romance.†Neither sex seems to understand the other’s attraction to such things, but there it is. And that is all it is, a difference.
I don’t believe most men look at models and grumble that the woman in their life isn’t that good. Anymore than I believe women watch a romantic movie and grumble that their man isn’t as good as the movie character. But if he does act that way, HE is the one with a problem. And in thinking about it a bit, perhaps we guys should feel a little threatened by romance novels…
What a stupid lie
