BODY IMAGE (CONSUMER PSYC)

Body image is how a person thinks about his body his/her physical appearance and in turn how

he/she feels about it emotionally with a perception he/she has of his/her body. Body image can

be positive or negative depending upon the perception and if someone has a negative body image

of one’s self it can affect him in various ways including feeling ashamed, lack of self respect or

self confidence and in the long run they may experience eating disorder, isolation and mental

illness, so having a positive body image of one’s self is very important. And it is hugely

influenced by the beauty standards set by the society.

While talking about Pakistan although it is a Islamic country in which our religion addressees to

women and men to dress modestly and cover their selves but only a few number of people

behave like that and culture plays a major role in formation society rather than Islam. It can be

seen that negative body image is prevailing among the common population and increasing day

by day because of the media intervention and the affect that it is having, and some credit also

goes to the culture and how from centuries as seen in the history of Indian subcontinent that only

fair skin and light weight is considered beautiful in women as shown in Mughal paintings
Looking at these painting we can have clear idea of how our culture used to promote the beauty

standards in women and what was considered beautiful in those days, girls having fair skin and

narrow waists. Likewise same can be said about the men being a warrior, a fighter, some who is

strong was deemed beautiful and for this the men should have muscular strength and physically

should have strong built and a good physique.

Through this way the standards of beauty were descended upon us, and even in this age more or

less same perception prevails, but due to media intervention and increasing social networking

this has gotten a boost as everyone now watches some form of entertainment and in it the

characters seen have been following these beauty standards which is causing a societal pressure

in minds of the whole population. So in this way media is playing its role as can be seen in

various tv dramas in which the protagonist is always that woman who is fair and thin, women

who are overweight never get to be the heroin and the roles given to them are of funny characters

or of negative nature. Same can be said about the women seen in ads they never take normal

average looking people to star in the ads or tv serials but they always go for the good looking
one’s to sell their products, this can be fully applied on men as well because in the tv serials and

ads men used are also those who have good physical appearance which includes having lean

muscular built and fair skin while those people who are average looking or bit over weight

always play the funny character and never gets the girl. And nobody wants to be that guy or girl

everyone wants to be the hero or the heroin and in order to achieve such this status you have to

have these beauty standards, so common population is always under pressure to look as good as

these people do which promotes the negative body image of one’s self because not everyone can

achieve such standards and not everyone afford these products or the time and energy it requires

to look a certain way. Which has resulted in increase in low self esteem and depression in young

adults specially women in Pakistan (Qidwai, Ishaque, Shah, & Rahim, 2010), because their idols

are these celebrities which are shown to have the best physical appearance and they can’t reach

that level.

Examples

Pakistani TV shows and in all of them the women who have the main character are shown to

have fair skin and thin appearance signifying their beuty, and if there is a show where a over

weight woman is shown the role given to her is of a comic nature a funny role.
Title covers of the dramas shows the woman to have petite appearance with fair skin as well as

the men shown in TV dramas to have lean muscular built with good hairstyles which causes

insecurity among the common population as every women can’t achieve such weight as well as

men who don’t have good hair genes do feel insecure watching these dramas. So people resort to

taking weight reduction pills and other steroids while men go for hair transplant which causes

them to loose a lot of money and put their health at risk, just to feel good and achive these beauty

standards

Next example is of how fairness cream ads are being displayed on TVs as well as on banners that

can be seen on the roads

In both of these we can see how marketers target this insecurity of people of having fair skin and

these ads are the most common ads which are shown everyday to us same for men and women.

They take models who are already naturally fair or have used makeup to enhance their skin color

than forces common people into believing that this the beauty standard which needs to be

achieved to look beautiful in this society, same goes for women and men as they both are

targeted to have fair skins and they also have celebrity endorsement on their products which

causes people to become depress and to achieve this level they start taking these creams which

don’t help them becoming fair as shown in the ads so the consumers become more depress and
they resort to taking fairness injections which can have a adverse effect on the health of these

people.

Another example is of models used in clothing brands which can be seen on cover of magazines

as well as on banners

All of these fashion brands in Pakistan show models that have a petite physical appearance with

fair skin same for men which have a lean muscular built and for average looking people to

achieve these beauty standards set by fashion brands are impossible to achieve so they naturally

start to a have negative body image of their selves because they look as perfect as these models

shown, and these ads are shown everywhere from Youtube ads to magazines to billboards

In all of these examples you can see a certain pattern, there are things in common like the models

used in these ads are shown to have a perfect physical appearance they look beautiful and sadly

this is the thing which sells. They project these physically gifted people on to us to make us buy

their products and it causes average looking people to have a low self image and low self esteem

of themselves making them depress and in severe cases causing them to have mental illness

because they don’t consider themselves fit in the society and in many cases to tackle such
demands people resort to taking illegal drugs to have weight loss or to get fair skin while others

start using addictive drugs to wash away their depressions and anxieties

Societal market is a concept in which the focus is on human welfare as their top most priority to

promote a better image of the company in the minds of consumers by taking part in social

responsibilities and having social awareness campaigns, so in this regard the brand or company

should at first stop selling the superficial beauty image which is been created and use models for

their ads which are more average looking so that people watching the ads could relate to it on a

general level and start feeling comfortable in their own skin without having to drastically change

their physical appearance like there is a movement going on india which is now projecting the

dark skin color as being beautiful and in European countries where plus size models are being

shown on magazine’s covers as well having their own clothing line which is having a positive

effect on the people who are living there, these are the two examples which can be seen around

the world so similar should be done by marketers in Pakistan for their societal marketing

campaigns one of these could be adopted or they can stop showing these almost perfect people

which the common population can’t relate to. If these methods can be adopted it will definitely

have a positive effect on population of Pakistan and the body image of the population could be

improved

REFRENCES

iEduNote.com. (2018). Societal Marketing Concept Examples, Advantages and Importance. [online]

Available at: https://iedunote.com/societal-marketing-concept [Accessed 27 Nov. 2018].

Body image. (2018). Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_image

(2018). Retrieved from https://geistscience.com/JMS/Issue1-14/Article2/JMS1401102.pdf

country's perspective. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3119165/

Feminine beauty ideal. (2018). Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminine_beauty_ideal