It’s no secret that women’s bodies are used to sell everything under the sun. But did you realize that photos of women in ads are airbrushed and edited on a computer before they get published? It’s impossible to look like the women featured in most ads, unless you were digitally edited too. Teens are constantly exposed to ads featuring barely clothed women that have soft smooth skin, perfect makeup, zero blemishes and—no nipples. That’s right: Some ads even go so far as to digitally erase women’s body parts like nipples or belly buttons just to sell a product!

Take a look at Heidi Klum in this ad for Jordache jeans. Where did her nipples go?

Hayden Panettiere, star of Heroes, looks like a shiny alien with a missing belly button in this Dooney & Bourke ad:

It’s one thing to remove a blemish here and there in a photo, but editing out a woman’s nipples or belly button? Get real! Deleting body parts in ads just to sell stuff is creepy. And it really twists people’s ideas of what real bodies look like and what it means to be beautiful. The next time you see an ad, keep in mind that most companies don’t use real beauty to sell products, and look to see if the model has ALL her body parts.

Take a look at Dove’s short film Evolution. It shows the process of turning an ordinary person into a computer-edited beauty queen.

Tags: advertisements, body image

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 13, 2008 at 3:41 pm and is filed under Everyday Sex Ed. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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