Wednesday, January 20, 2016

Appearance: Supreme Value in Marketing

A series of articles in the Catholic Times exams the way sex is seen in the popular culture. Morality gives way to profit as the standard of judgement. News is often not  honest, and citizens  show little concern. Biotechnology without recourse to any ethical position is of little interest to the media.

All kinds of suggestive advertising come into the homes; there are no limits in contents or location. Smart phones are used mostly by those in their 20s and 30s  and what  is harmful is difficult to classify and passed over quickly.

A recent article was concerned with the way  advertising for clothes is made to the young students. Thinness is carried to a degree where it becomes harmful. One is not recognized if one is not pretty and thin. Appearance is the supreme judge of a person's value: corsets grafted into the  school dress and length of dresses.   

On the wall next to the entrance to a high school was an advertisement addressed to girls with a famous dance vocalist. Wearing her school uniform a girl student in the advertisement was drawing the  attention to her thinness of a man in his forties with dark classes, admiring her beauty. The advertisement was removed shortly for being suggestive.

There are persons  sensitive to what is happening, and the article mentions health teachers in one of the school systems. They notified the schools and made the problem of these kinds of advertising known. The result of this  kind of advertising is having a bad influence on students. A girl's figure becomes all important and  leads to all kinds of health problems: anorexia, indigestion, menstrual pain, underweight and TB and other problems.

With the attentions given by the public to the advertising, the clothing company did agree to change the advertising for the future. Companies of this type are not interested in the health of the students as much as appearance and consequently, the way they choose to market their clothes: 'Beauty is strength.'

Many are the teachers who feel that the protection of our school children is not provided for adequately.  "When we don't take a problem seriously it is not a problem, but needs to become a problem." When the young people become objects of sexual exploitation in  advertising, something needs to be done and more voices raised in protest, working  for a change.