Getting a Little...Old

I found this hilarious jab done by Huffington Post at Abercrombie and Fitch, the infamous teen retailer.  After the CEO made a remark about how he didn't want fat people shopping at his store in 2013, the sales at the store dropped, not surprisingly.  I was a huge fan of Abercrombie in 7th and 8th grade.  Still to this day I would buy clothes there, but usually I find it either too expensive or not unique enough.  Abercrombie, who features topless men, and scantily clad women, on the cover of their bags and on most of their window/online advertisements, has always done a great job in making the clothes seem attractive. It uses transfer association because consumers would feel that they too could be just as sexy and attractive as the models, or they could also snag a handsome man if they wore the clothes. 
Abercrombie did a great job in making me feel like less of a person because I wasn't skinny enough to fit a size zero or I was too short and the pants could never fit properly.  Abercrombie is one of the many media influences on young girls and how they perceive their bodies. By excluding sizes such as XL they set up a barrier for what was "cool" or socially acceptable, since Abercrombie was a big deal (at least for me in middle school). 

I would have to admit though, that the way Abercrombie advertised to teens was very effective since everyone wants to be apart of the "in" group-the "cool kids". 

With new retailers, and also less customers, who have been off put by the CEO and the message that Abercrombie sends to young girls and teens, Huffington took the opportunity to display a tangible representation of the store.  This old store is not the newest coolest thing anymore. 

Who Makes Cool?

So recently I have been thinking about buying some new clothes since its summer and it's been ingrained in my mind that a new season equals buying new clothes.  As a critical thinker now, I have been very cautious with my urges to buy things in general.  I can now see the appeals and the ad techniques that advertisers use. However, no matter how much I can identify the messages and techniques used, I realize I still have the desire to buy new things.

Now that I have already established that I want to buy summer clothes--swimsuits, shorts, tanktops etc...It's important to talk about why I feel the need to buy such new clothes, when my closet is stuffed with clothes that still fit me perfectly (since I stopped growing about three years ago.) The media sends messages to me everyday advertising the new coolest things and as more and more people get this new, cool thing, I feel more pressure to buy it as well.  The pressure from the media to buy new things is a heavy load, but the pressure I put on myself is even harder.  I made a revelation after watching Missrepresentation, in my last post. Put shortly I realized that girls feel pressure to look good all the time.  In order to look good we feel that we need the coolest stuff to wear, and look the prettiest, and follow the latest trends. In the documentary, Merchants of Cool, advertisers said that it was the teens, the consumers who "invent" what is cool, but that is not the case. 

To a certain extent it is the teens who are dictating what is cool and what is not cool, but as long as advertisers keep making the same types of clothes and advertising them with pretty models who are surrounded by friends and boys, It seems that advertisers actually have the power. 

Scrolling through the endless wonders of online shopping websites, I saw many repeated styles.  For example crop tops, or kimonos, or another one of my favorites, flowy shorts.  As of right now I find those styles to be trendy, but these styles have been blown up by the media so much already.  And STILL people are buying these trends.  The minute that advertisers bring out the next new style, girls will jump on the chance to buy  it.  As a consumer who wants to buy new clothes, unless the advertiser comes up with a new trendy style and starts selling, no one will be able to buy it, so doesn't that make the advertisers the dictators of cool or no?

If you managed to read this whole thing great job!

Who Wore it Best?

I absolutely love gossip magazines, but I rarely get the chance to read them.  So in my most recent visit to the orthodontist, who has and endless supply of magazines from People to Us to Star, I got to read up on some juicy gossip.  One of my favorite segments in the magazines is called who wore it better?  I always scrutinized the women who appeared on the page, and decided who looked prettier.  Then later checked if my opinion matched with the polls.  After watching the documentary Missrepresentation in my critical thinking class, I realized how horribly the media affected, not only the way I looked but how most of society looks at women

Scrolling through pictures on google and based on my experience of reading magazines with this specific segment, I noticed that only women are featured.  In other words, only women are scrutinized, objectified, judged by their outward appearance and ranked by the ever growing standards of beauty.  The women in the pictures are being put on display, not taking into account that they have feelings too.  Realizing this, I understood why girls are so hard on themselves regarding appearance.  It also one of the reasons why we see each other as competition rather than someone we can be friends with. If I were placed in a situation where someone I knew or didn't know was ranked "better" in this case, looks, I would feel absolutely degraded and not only grow to jealous of that person, but also start to hate myself. 

In the picture above both, Gage Golightly and Jenna Dewan Tatutm, look stunning.  There is no need to degrade  a person by their looks.  The magazine company only asked 100 people, which I feel is a small number.  Only 100 people judged these women by their looks, but the whole world will see the unfair results of Gage Golightly's 27%. 

Influenced by media, who's teaching us to judge each other by appearance, It s no wonder that us girls and women feel so much pressure to look good all the time.