Airbrushing: The Unrealistic Perception Of A Person's Natural Beauty

The average American sees around 4,000 to 10,000 advertisements every day (redcrowmarketing.com). Advertisements are everywhere consumers look, including on television, billboards, menus, and apps. Airbrushing is a technique that is shown in most of the advertisements published. Airbrushing is a popular method that a myriad of companies use to make their products look higher quality. Companies even use airbrushing on the models shown with the product. The airbrushing completely distorts the model’s physical appearance. Although it may not seem harmful, airbrushing the models and products is not healthy for consumers to see. Many major companies, such as Aerie and Seventeen Magazine, have decided to stop using photoshop in their advertisements.

Women were questioned on whether they thought an airbrushed advertisement look realistic or not. Ninety-six percent of those women believed that the advertisements looked unrealistic. Nevertheless, the unrealistic appearance of these advertisements compels consumers to feel that they are being mislead. Airbrushing is a counterfeit representation of what a person’s natural beauty truly is. Moreover, it makes people think that natural beauty is being scarcely skinny and having perfect skin. This is an exaggeration because no one is perfect. Beauty is measured by what is inside a person. In addition to those facts, airbrushing is false advertisement. It shows the product as one way when it really looks another. Airbrushing does not help businesses in the interest that consumers are not going to be satisfied with the product when they receive it and it is not what they are expecting it to be. People will identify the company as untrustworthy. Airbrushing is a doltish idea considering it is misleading to

Many eating disorders are fueled by airbrushed pictures. For instance, Rachel Johnson, a 20 year old girl, says that celebrity magazines fueled her anorexia. She made a scrapbook of all the airbrushed, skinny celebrities to motivate her when she got hungry. She desperately wanted to achieve the ‘celebrity figure’ and survived on half an apple every two days to achieve her mission. She almost killed herself and airbrushed photographs played a major role in it (www.dailymail.co.uk). Nevertheless, many people go on diet due to media portrayal of models. In Dove’s experiment, sixty-six percent of girls think media portrayals is a reason they go on diets. From personal experience, I know when I am looking at an advertisement with a skinny celebrity I have thought “wow I need to go on a diet”. As shown in the many examples, airbrushing makes many people unhappy with their body. According to dosomething.org, “People who are unhappy with their body and don’t seek health nutrition information may develop eating disorders”. Nevertheless, eating disorders can be caused by airbrushed advertisements. Eating disorders are incredibly unhealthy and can lead to very dangerous medical conditions. Airbrushing in advertisements sets an unhealthy goal for people that should be