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Essay / Jean Kilbourne's Impact on Beauty - 1229
These days, it's almost impossible to avoid exposure to advertisements. Since most people are exposed to advertisements, advertisements and the values they sell influence society. In Jean Kilbourne's essay, she states that "[a]dvertising sells values, images and concepts of love and sexuality, romance, success and, perhaps most importantly, normalcy" (126). According to Kilbourne, advertisers not only sell their products, but also their values, and one of the most popular values sold by advertisers is beauty. In today's society, the effects of beauty are scandalous as people's attention towards physical appearance increases. In the past, women generally regarded beauty as an important value, but today, beauty has become an important value. By analyzing Clarisonic's Pedi ad, I'm going to show you how ads leave an imprint on people's idea of beauty without them realizing it. The advertisement for Pedi by Clarisonic is an advertisement for a foot cleansing brush. The ad has a white background and two-foot images that explain the effect of the product in the center of it. One of the two feet looks smoother and cleaner than the other and it is shown before and after below the pictures. This shows the audience that the product can change their skin, just like the skin in the ad. Although it may take some time, perhaps a few days, a few weeks or a few months, advertising only shows the public the positive end effect of the product. Therefore, people who see this ad would think that their skin would instantly transform just like the feet on the adverts. Kilbourne explains that “[a]dvertizing constantly promotes the fundamental belief of American culture: that we can recreate ourselves, transform ourselves, transcend our circumstances, but with a twist” (122). Although transformation usually takes time and effort, in most advertising, transformations happen