Ad airbrushing

After reading the article on the Ralph Lauren advertisement I feel I must agree to some extent that some advertisements are pushing things too far. It's true that women today feel a lot of pressure to live up to the women presented by media. Airbrushed images they make models appear to have perfect figures only create an unnatural belief that women feel they must live up to in order to be considered beautiful by society. This in turn affects not only a woman's self esteem, but can have physical affects as well such as unhealthy crash diets.

I see nothing wrong with a few minor touch ups on a photo: red eye, a face blemish here, maybe even adjusting eye color, however this appears to be one of those scenarios where you give an inch and they'll take a few miles. If that's going to be the case, I can't help but feel photos should not be airbrushed.

Chapter 8

Chapter 8 discussed many different issues associated with identity. People need to know who they are and feel that they belong in the world. In this way an audience is created as a market. A market identifies a subset of the population as potential consumers of a particular indentifiable product or set of products.

There are two basic ways audiences are constructed and function as a market: as consumers (also referred to as market type) and as commodities.  In turn at least a part of a person's identity is defined by their participation in a market. The consumer society suggests that all social problems can be solved by working on your "self".

The three most common and persistent ways of describing market types include:

1. Demographics-quantitative description of population according to a set of social or sociological variables such as age, income, and gender.

2. Taste Culture- Refers to continuing commitment of a group of people to some type of product.

3. Lifestyle Clusters- Represents the segment of population that tends to purchase and use certain kinds of products or to make certain kinds of decisions. (Members tend to spend their money and time in a similar manner)

When the audience is viewed as a commodity, they are looked at as an object produced in order to be sold for a profit. (TV and radio are the most common and obvious places that an audience is commodified).

Chapter 8 also discussed social identity and acknowledged three main questions:

1. Where do categories of identity come from and what do they signify?

2. What does it mean to belong to or be a member of a particular social group?

3. What is the content or meaning of categories and how are these meanings determined?

In response to these questions, there are two schools of thought.

1. Essentialist View- categories of identity are natural, necessary, and universal.

2. Anti-Essential View- There is no single physical trait or genetic marker that can be used to separate the human population into races.

As a whole, the chapter was trying to explain that people's identities are less stable and unified than they were in previous generations. People's identities are changing under the influence of pop culture and mass media.

Chapter 5 meaning

Chapter 5 discussed the different ways in which we interpret media. First of all, it's important to remember that we are always interpreting media, though we aren't always aware we are doing so.

Chapter 5 broke up meaning into two separate domains.

1. The world itself 

2. The languages people use to describe it.

In this way meaning organizes the human world, and human beings live in a world of meanings. This concept is associated with 'polysemy', the fact that anything can have a variety of different meanings or interpretations.

There are also two theories associated with meanings:

1. Representational (object in the world)

2. Conceptual (in someone's mind)

Chapter 5 also went into great detail about codes, or the systematic organization or structure of signs. Codes of meaning in this way, ultimately produce the world we live in.

In summation, chapter 5 explained that people live in a world of meanings and interpretations organized by codes of differences.