Overcoming the Negative Effects of Body Portrayals in Fashion Advertising
The fashion industry is notorious for having models wear styled outfits and showcase various
clothes, particularly in fashion runways and advertisements. With stylish trends in fashion dominating the
world in the current generation, it is no doubt that people place a focal point on the type of body they
deem “suitable” for those trends. The “tall and stick-thin” image is prevalent among models in the
industry who regularly appear in commercials. While it does provide an effective form of advertising due
to the eye-catching figures of the models, it also leads to negative effects among the people.
In her article “How Fashion and Beauty Advertising Negatively Effects Women,” Free (2019)
wrote: “The classic hour-glass, stick-thin body type is used showcasing each model as perfect. When
women see this in advertising and notice the consistency in each body shape, it becomes important to
them to reach that unrealistic image which is Photoshopped most of the time.” Fashion advertisements set
unrealistic expectations when they constantly use the same body type to advertise clothes, which has a
negative effect on people’s self-esteem and confidence. An effective solution to this would be to showcase
more diverse body types that show the reality of the human body in fashion advertisements, breaking the
conception that a skinny body is the standard and “ideal” body type for people. People come in all shapes
and sizes; portraying only one certain body type in commercials merely undermines the reality that there
are many different body types in the world aside from it.
A more diverse portrayal of the different body types of humans would greatly decrease the
negative effects of fashion advertisements. With different body types gaining more and more exposure in
the media, more people will start to embrace themselves and their own bodies without having to compare
their features with those of models. How clothes fit all kinds of human bodies should be emphasized in
the field of fashion rather than limiting the scope to a certain body figure, for fashion focuses more on
self-expression through style and coordination rather than the kind of body a person has.
Reference: https://scholarworks.bgsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1232&context=writ
