Beauty and the beast: images of women in advertisements

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BARBIE AS THE IMAGE OF AN IDEAL WOMAN
It is true that recently there have been some changes in the images of women. For
instance Barbie, a famous American doll which almost every girl in the United States
knows and has been introduced and sold in many other countries including Indonesia, has
undergone some changes. Barbie, who was designed by a man, first had her breasts large
and out of proportion to the rest of her body. Her body has convinced millions of girls
and women that her bust and waist are the epitome of lovability. It establishes an
impossible standard of physical perfection for girls and women that no real woman can
possibly achieve. Some critics blame Mattel, the company which produces Barbie, for
contributing to a social climate that overemphasizes looks at the expense of women’s
other qualities.
Later, Mattel signed up Barbie for an extraordinary round of plastic surgery. Her
breasts were reduced, her waist was enlarged, and her face was changed just a bit to
produce a more ‘realistic’ ideal. Borger (2000) maintained, however, that despite the
changes, we have missed a more important point: It is not Barbie’s figure that is the big
problem. It is her values. Her outfits are groomed to appeal to those upwardly mobile
baby boomer mothers who thought Barbie looked too cheap for their children. Barbie,
who was first dressed up more like a middle class woman, is now wearing her clothes
from the likes of Christian Dior or Ralph Lauren. Barbie has become a snob. Hence, what
we are getting is : You’re never too young to become an elitist (p.40).
Indeed, there has been another change in the images of women. A ‘new woman’
has emerged in commercials in recent years. She is generally presented as superwoman,
who manages to do all the work at home and on the job, or as a liberated woman, who
owes her independence and self-esteem to the products she uses. Kilbourne (1999)
believed that “these new images do not represent any real progress but rather create a
myth of progress, an illusion that reduces complex sociopolitical problems to mundane
personal ones. Advertising images do not cause these problems, but they contribute to
them by creating a climate in which the marketing of women’s bodies ... is seen as
acceptable” (p. 180).

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BEAUTY AND THE BEAST: IMAGES OF WOMEN IN ADVERTISMENTS (Esther H. Kuntjara)
Jurusan Desain Komunikasi Visual, Fakultas Seni dan Desain –Universitas Kristen Petra
http://puslit.petra.ac.id/journals/design/