Blog 7_Wk_4_Advertising_Consumer_Cultures_Desire

The "anti-ad" from the Adbusters Culturejammer's website I chose to examine was the anti-ad for Calvin Klein's Obsession perfume. The anti-ad contains the text "Obsession for women" over an image of a naked women kneeling over an open toilet with a hand clutching her stomach. This image is commenting on the "obsession" over weight, commented on in Killing Us Softly, that advertisements inadvertently encourage in women. Advertisement's choice of highlighting a body type that only 5% of women in the world are born with (a type that you must be born into - cannot be shaped by dieting or other means) places unfair and unrealistic ideals of beauty as what all women should strive to achieve, while also pushing the message that natural beauty can never be perfect. This commonly leads to females developing various forms of eating disorders as they try to reach these unreachable ideals. This anti-ad wants us to think about what these brands, CK here specifically, are saying about what a woman should and shouldn't be; that while these brands on the surface may only be trying to sell their product, the underlying message in how they choose to sell it is selling more than just nice smelling perfume.