Every day I take the buckeye village bus, and every day we pass one of those billboards that has 3 signs and they all rotate around showing you one of the three signs for a timed limit. Well on of the signs is a billboard for a plastic surgeon, the only image on the billboard is of a woman’s torso, that is wearing a very low cut red shirt. The billboard in very large writing says “Who said diamonds were a girl’s best friend?” The first time I saw this ad I laughed and thought “Wow that can’t be real”. This ad was deliberately seeking out insecure woman and showing them an ad that says basically “You do not look good enough but we can cut you open and put some stuff in or take some stuff out so you can feel better about yourself”
The text “Who says diamonds are a girl’s best friend?” makes women seem superficial and that they only care about their appearances and money. While the woman on the ad does not have a head or legs they still present her in a very high fashion and heteronormative way, she is white, wearing a nice looking shirt and a diamond necklace. By taking away her face the ad forces the viewer to see just a sexual object. The red shirt is very intentional, not only does it draw our eyes to it, but many studies have proven over and over again that woman who wear red are considered more attractive by people around them. The photographer also had the woman move her body in a way that would come across in that would make her breasts look bigger and still look sexy. The goal of the woman on the ad is to draw in your attention and read the ad but for the woman who look at it the ad helps perpetuate the idea that a small waist and large breasts is what every woman needs to be beautiful.
This ad also got me wondering about what an ad for plastic surgeons would like if they were gendered to men. So I spent about 20 minutes google searching trying to find a plastic surgery ad aimed at men. I could not find a single one. However, I did find plenty more ads aimed at woman most of which were targeting their breasts and claiming to make them bigger, or showing before and after images which are clearly still photo shopped. So not only are woman not beautiful enough on their own but even their before and after images from the plastic surgeons were photo shopped to look better. Ads such as these are the reason we get shows such as Amy Schumer’s 12 Angry Men because Hollywood and the media that we consume daily show woman this impossible to obtain beauty standard. Before starting this class I thought the ad was simply just stupid, but now that we as a class have learned to analyze sources that we all the time the ad makes me almost angry because it is trying to push this one idea of beauty and we see all the time that there are so many forms of beauty.