Jean Kilbourne's Impact On Beauty

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Nowadays, it is almost impossible to avoid exposure to advertisements. Since most of people are exposed to the advertisements, the advertisements and the values that they sell influence the society. In Jean Kilbourne’s essay, she asserts that “[a]dvertising sells values, images, and concepts of love and sexuality, romance, success, and, perhaps most important, normalcy” (126). According to Kilbourne, the advertisers sell not only their products but also the values and one of the most popular values that the advertisers sell is beauty. In today’s society, the effects of beauty are outrageous as people’s attentions to the physical appearance increases. In the past, generally women considered beauty as important value, but now, beauty became one of the By analyzing the advertisement for Pedi from Clarisonic, I will show you how the ads leave imprint on people’s idea about beauty without they recognizing it. The advertisement for Pedi from Clarisonic is an advertisement about foot cleansing brush. The ad has white background and images of two feet which explain the effect of the product at the center of it. One of two feet looks smoother and cleaner than another and it says before and after under the images. It shows the audience that the product can change their skin just like the skin in the ad. Even though it might take a while, maybe few days, few weeks, or few months, the ad only shows audience the positive final effect of the product. Therefore, the people who see this ad would think that their skin would transform just like the feet on the ads instantly. Kilbourne discusses that “[a]dvertising constantly promotes the core belief of American culture: that we can recreate ourselves, transform ourselves, transcend our circumstances-but with a twist” (122). Even though the transformation generally takes time and effort, in most advertisements, transformations happen

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