Marketing & Women

iVillage Member
Registered: 01-03-2006
Marketing & Women
12
Thu, 06-22-2006 - 2:24pm
I just had a conversation with one of our receptionists where I work and it intrigued me to get some responses. She told me she would have more confidence in herself if she had bigger breasts. I told her, that there was nothing wrong with her and she is very beautiful. Then I said if you had bigger breasts, then you would find something else. Sure enough, then she said she had some cellulite. She said don't guys want women like those in the magazines. So I told her those women airbrushed, made up, et.c and they are not real. I understand that marketing can be psychological and I believe that some marketers play on the insecurities of others to sell a product. But do most women fall into that trap of comparing theirself to these women in magazines? I really hadn't thought about this much until I had this conversation.

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Avatar for cl_shywon
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-20-2003
Fri, 06-23-2006 - 10:26am

I do think it hits younger kids much harder than we realize.

iVillage Member
Registered: 10-30-2005
Sat, 06-24-2006 - 2:19pm
I definitely think the ads hit teens and tweens the hardest - I know when I was young, the *only* thing I did was compare myself, and decide that I didn't measure up. I wear the very small sizes women say they would die to wear, and I can tell you that fitting into size X is not the key to happiness, because I thought I was hideous, and I still know I'm not perfection!
Now, I find a lot of hapiness in my body, despite and even because of my flaws. I'm glad that I don't see myself as the perfect embodiment of hot and beautiful. I think that would actually be pretty boring, and I think it would make hearing 'you're beautiful' from someone I love pretty boring ("tell me something I *don't* know"). Beauty is way more transcendent than a size or weight or shape. And I think we all have some yucky cellulite, stretch marks, funny angles, etc. I do!

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