How can we define if someone is healthy? Do we judge it on their appearance and by their weight? Most of us judge do. Being skinny isn't necessarily an identifier of being healthy, especially for people who are under the age of 30. Our metabolisms work at an exaggerating rate for some individuals allowing them to eat whatever the want but not gain a pound.
This podcast gives great views on how people should focus on themselves and not worry about what others think of them. At the end of the day, we all just want to be happy right ?
How to Become your Ideal Self
Let's look at the ideal body image that has been placed into our minds. Society has taught us that we have to look a certain way for people to find us attractive. Marketers feed on this desire to attract consumers to buy their products giving them the appearance that there is such thing as the "perfect body". Victoria's Secret proudly flaunts their idea of "The Perfect Body" so woman who wear their products will associate themselves with these models.
Dove on the other hand has a completely different approach and promotes that all sizes are beautiful. Dove uses the same look as the Victoria's Secret ad, but does not sell their products for their looks. Do you like this campaign more than Victoria's Secret's? Do you think Dove really has those views or are they just trying to position themselves this way for the publicity?
Companies position their products to attract consumers in a way so that they view their product as healthy even though it isn't in the slightest. Take for example, Skinny girl alcoholic products. Everyone knows that alcohol isn't good for you, but girls think that if they drink this certain brand it won't be as bad for their health. It gives them the illusion that since it isn't as bad for you they can drink more, which just counters the effect of it being a "healthier" option anyways.
The ideal self is the view of how we would like ourselves to be. This is rarely realistic as everyone has high expectations of themselves. The actual self, a more realistic appraisal of one qualities, is a lot more reliable. Very few people have achieved their ideal self as we always finding something wrong with ourselves and looking for new ways to improve. Certain products allow us to accept our body the way they are, but a lot try to change our body and the way we think of it. Clothing magazines, and almost everything with a model in it does not help us reach our ideal selves, but instead make us think about how we cannot reach the "ideal self" fed to us by media.
Let's discuss the self-concept, a bit more interesting in my opinion. The self-concept is the "beliefs a person holds about his/her own attributed, and how he/she evaluated these qualities" (SWD, p.121). Certain attributes can include ones content, which is how attractive they find their body and variance, which is if they consider it to be positive or negative.
Dove made a great video in which they asked the women to meet with a random person and have them describe this person and themselves. They then asked that other person to do the same, with multiple groups of people. At the end they compared the two images and all the women noticed the image of themselves was not as accurate as the other image as the were harsher on themselves. The message in this video is that we do not give ourself enough credit for our looks and are to hard on ourselves. This ad was a huge success for their real beauty campaign and helped a lot of women.
What do you think about the two different ways companies can position themselves? Should they promote their product to a specific niche, or should they allow people to embrace who they are and not have them change to fit into societies view on appearance?
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