I don’t think a day goes by where the Internet doesn’t completely lose it over something that a business or a company has *tried* to advertise.
In my four years as a public relations major in college, I have had the concept of ethical advertising and ethical reasoning drilled into my head. Did these advertising agenices and public relations firms forget or are they that careless?
Right now in 2017, we are living in a world of mass acceptance as well as mass criticism. I’ll show you what I mean:
Here, we have an ad by Zara. According to their website, “Zara is one of the largest international fashion companies. It belongs to Inditex, one of the world’s largest distribution groups. The customer is at the heart of our unique business model, which includes design, production, distribution and sales through our extensive retail network.” All of this sounds really great, right? They accept all humans, all bodies, and all kinds of shapes/sizes. Well, if you saw this ad, you really wouldn’t think that.
This ad says, “love your curves” so I took a shot in the dark, decided to Google deep-dive, and typed into the search engine, “curvy woman sketch.”
Honestly, these are beautiful sketches of beautiful women. Their curves are sexy, God-given, mesmorizing, and simply normal. What Zara’s advertising team failed to do was accept that, yes all women have curves, but no, not all women are skinny-curvy. Zara’s ad doesn’t represent the typical American curvy woman. That’s not a bad thing, either! However, Zara’s ad isn’t accurate in reference to women with curves.
The media and advertising agencies accept that curves are prevelant and beautiful, but they fail to represent them correctly, and this isn’t exclusive to just women, but to a lot of the population.
There is misrepresentation that men are sexual beings and women only want to lie on their back, yet we liberate women for their sexual freedom and men for being chivalrous.
There is misrepresentation towards a person based on their race, yet we chant “Black Lives Matter” like we’re all going to show up for them.
What is the common denomenator? The lack of remorse for how an ad may make someone feel, the lack of remorse for how an ad represents an entire group of people, and most importantly, the lack of represenation of a certian type of person by manipulating them into what advertising agencies and the media think they should look like.
Is it ethical? No.
Does it keep happening? Yes.
Why? It really isn’t that difficult (in my humble and collegiette opinion) to design an advertisment that is both respectful and representative of the reason and people you are creating it for. Of course we have made leaps and bounds in the industry, but advertisements need a reality check and it’s up to us to give it them.
Image Sources:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C5wPcXJXQAAQFf1.jpg:large
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/32/1e/b8/321eb8cd87bf5155df7c896cb9048d2d.jpg