Do Advertisements really shape who we are?
             Media shapes our idea of beauty by the advertisements we see. An advertisement like Hard Tail clothing has every girl in the advertisement skinny and in shape. It might not surprise you to read that most American women think that they are too fat. However, many people do not realize how these ideas about body image have boiled down to mostly children and young adults. We do not have to go much farther than a billboard, magazine advertisement, or well-liked television show to understand the concern over how girls and women are being portrayed as a whole. There are many reasons why the media shapes the way women feel about themselves. Advertisements may be used to sell people products and to communicate messages about body image, self-confidence, social ideals, and behavior. There are two advertisements that truly show similarities on the way women are portrayed in the media. One is for the BORA BORA fragrance by Liz Claiborne and the other advertisement is for Hard Tail Forever clothing company.
             As highlighted by Health Canada, the average American woman is 5' 4" tall and weighs 140 pounds. The average American model is 5' 11" tall and weighs 117 pounds (45).There are 3 billion women who do not look like supermodels and only eight who do. Ninety percent of all girls between the ages three and eleven have a Barbie doll, an early role model with a figure that is inaccessible in real life (53). In both advertisements all the women and men are very lean and in immense physical condition with flat stomachs and no fat on their bodies anywhere. The man in the BORA BORA advertisement has a powerfully built stomach, which would tell men that they would also look this good if they have the advertisements fragrance. All the people in both advertisements are very attractive, which would tell the reader that if you wear these clothes and this perfume you need to look and smell like these people and ...