English commentary Shrish Venkat The modern day American’s life is far different from the one in the 1980’s. The 80’s were a very significant time in American history. This was the time when the when the people’s ideology was “the bigger the better” which resulted in 22 % of the population to be “obese.” However, by the mid 1980’s this ideology changed due to propagandas and influential articles, which emphasized on the portrayal of attractive women and the importance to look good. Taking advantage of this situation a company called “Shape” cunningly made people to feel extremely insecure about their weight in order to secure their business objective of “profit” by producing a persuasive advertisement based on frivolous assumptions titled …show more content…
The most important element is the photo in the center of the article .The company purposely puts this assuming that an image of good looking teenage girls in swimsuits will instill jealousy within the reader and tell their audience that society expect the to look that way “swimsuits say everything” and the only alternative to do so is to have Shape. In addition it positions it right in the center of the text and its quite big in size, therefore increasing the amount of jealously induced within the reader .It also puts a picture of its product in the article, however its effect is influenced by the previous one. Once people see the photo of the three girls in swimsuits, it invokes jealously within them and makes them feel that they should have Shape, therefore the photo of the product probably get ingrained in their minds and when they visit the supermarket they’d easily identity the product and purchase that over …show more content…
For example “ face it you’ve got to stop eating” “stop eating” “that’s bad” “ this years swimsuits hide nothing” are statements, which the reader thinks reflects the opinion of the society. Therefore this makes them feel envious and they too unfortunately wish to achieve the surrealistic expectations of society, and Shape portrays itself as the only help. The article is written in the point of view of Shape and the narrator is speaking to the young teenage girls trying to inform them about the distraught situation they are in, once again having the effect of intimidating the reader and persuading them to purchase the product because of pathos. In conclusion, the target audience, purpose, context, stylistic and formal features play a very vital role in selling the USP of Shape and the idea of how sinful it is to be overweight in a successful marketing attempt to persuade their naïve young audience into entering their den and buying their devious