Zali's Hope

Advertisement is one of the best ways to expand your business and gain a wider client to sell your products to. The ad below has thin women in underwear promoting new clothes, nothing inherently wrong with that alone, however in big block quotes says “the perfect “body”” stating that the perfect body is only exclusive to thin women. A person's self image can impact them very heavily, especially if ads like these are exposed to younger girls who don't have the same body type as those women. There is nothing wrong with women showing love to all types of body types and sizes however only promoting thinner people in areas like fashion and health will only have negative impacts on people's emotional wellbeing. 

Body positivity is defined by the promotion of all body types. For years things like the fashion industry have defined the ideal beauty standard, they have dictated what weight, skin tone and hair type is most appealing. These things can and do have heavy impacts on young girls. Even the quote alone “the perfect body” has negative impacts, searching up that quote alone shows articles about what men see as perfect, there is a serious lack of representation regarding how women should see themselves. The fashion industry is predominantly run by men even though stereotypically fashion itself seems very feminine, having men in fashion is not bad but it does have impacts on what the consumers gain as the clothes are seen from a tone deaf perspective of the male gaze. The fashion industry in this day and age has made some improvements but still has some bias towards representing skinny models, Victoria Secret Angels for example still has the majority of the models being very thin. By promoting thin models above all else will only promote things like eating disorders and poor self image issues, this narrative only pushes that being thin will make you successful that if you want a modelling career you need to be a certain body type and if you do not fit in that certain weight gap that you will not be successful. Many young girls heavily believe that they can only reach happiness by being thin, the fashion industry, especially fast fashion pushes that belief by depicting their models as happy because they are thin. 

During lockdown, I expected my time as being part of an audience to be on hold until restrictions let up. I expected that due to the movies being shut that I wouldn't have the same collective experience I would usually have for a while. Recently a new show comes out on disney+  that was called Wandavision, there was one episode that aired every Friday, normally this wouldn’t be that big of a deal, id usually just finish an episode and go over the episode in my head and question or think about my favorites parts, this was a habit most people grow into I believe, that after seeing a movie with friends or family your mind immediately goes into bringing up the best parts as if your mind wants to save those emotions you felt at the climax of the show. Because of Covid I would usually finish the episode and feel dread knowing I couldn’t express those same opinions with my family, who all have very different tastes in movies and shows. I eventually got on the app known as TikTok and was relieved upon seeing all the people who were watching the show and talking about their theories and favourite characters and parts of the episode. I found myself having those same experiences just in a different way, much like most of the year I was having those experiences online rather than in person. The videos i saw on TikTok of people talking about Wandavision soon become my most anticipated part of my day, I looked forward after watching an episode and going on TikTok to see other's opinions on the latest episode. WandaVison was also had one of the biggest audiences watching it, bigger than another popular show at the time Bridgerton I think that having that discussion, even over social media, made it less isolating when experiencing something you enjoy. The media has always made its job to connect people easy and accessible and due to almost all of the world having to shut down and stay inside it made it more tempting to go on social media apps and interact with people. Everyone essentially ignoring the speech of "not speaking to strangers on the internet." As we all grew bored of staring at our walls. TikTok gave hundreds of thousands of people a creative outlet that connected us all together and we all utilised it best when we all needed it most.