As you gaze blankly through your morning magazine, the pages come to a halt as you stare down at a dazzlingly beautiful blonde who appears to have just come off a runaway. She has a slim waist that rises to a firm stomach. Only a small portion of her breasts are exposed, the rest covered by a small strip, leaving the observer to ponder what's underneath. This stunning description is not so far fetched to imagine; this image is probably in dozens of pornographic magazines. But the image I just described was a an advertisement for "Cointreau", a popular liquor, that I found in a COSMO magazine. This advertisement is just one of the thousands that plague our televisions, billboards, and magazines. But many of these everyday ads have one thing in common; they sell their product through sexual depictions. Our society is notorious for its clever advertisements that use women to sell a variety of products from snacks to expensive liquors, while at the same time, displaying exactly what a woman should look like. This use of women is a common practice that is used to catch the readers" eye, but most importantly, to associate their product with the pleasures that are normally affiliated with sex.
Writer Susan Bordo was effective in proving this theory simply by revealing the sub text behind the many ads that surround us each day. Bordo's writings help to see through the facade that these major companies display in order to sell their products. One of the issues that Bordo covers is that the media is primarily responsible for the views that our society has about how women should look. She successfully proves that through the images that are embedded into our mind (which are almost always of the picture perfect model)become what we assume as normal. We then expect every woman to have a certain level of irrational perfection. Bordo's thesis is even backed up by statistics. As the rate of reported anorexia and bullemia cases increase, it shows more than ever how desperate people are to have the "perfect" body.
