Ralph Lauren: An Analysis Of Stereotypes

The mass production of consumer goods has led to a growth in the advertising market that has greatly impacted the twentieth century. Thus, advertisements have become a mundane part of people's lives. Ads appear on electronic devices, television, public transportation, magazines, and on many other forms of communication. Companies use advertisements to bring public awareness to goods and services and make as many consumers informed about their brands. Many of these businesses use manipulative tactics to influence people's choices, perceptions, and emotional responses to a specific good or service. Fashion advertisements are one example of the many ads that manipulate public perception. Ralph Lauren is a luxury clothing brand established in
1967. The advertisement of Ralph Lauren's brand is a tall Caucasian woman with dirty blonde hair and blue eyes. She has slender features such as: her nose, lips, waist, arms, and thighs. The young woman looks relatively unhealthy as her waist is significantly smaller than her head, a physical and medical impossibility. The ad manipulates the average person's views by representing this idealized, yet unrealistic, image of how a young woman should look like. By supporting this image, Ralph Lauren seeks to manipulate consumers by creating a false perception, advertising the idea that these young women will become new and improved if they wear Ralph Lauren clothing. This brand is also geared towards a higher socio-economic class and status. Young women who will adore this advertisement will strive to achieve these impossible physical features and view this as their only ladder to success. It will manipulate young women into thinking that if they are the same size as the model, they will be able to wear these clothes and partake in this prestigious society. The model in the advertisement looks happy and confident in herself as she has placed both her hands on her hips flaunting her slender figure. What makes the advertisement even more manipulative is the way the model has placed both her arms in a diagonal manner on her hips, to fully display just how narrow and slim they are. Young women are enticed to believe that if they wear this brand, not only will they look slimmer, but also have poise, increase self-esteem, social acceptance, and joy in their lives. This obsession with youth and beauty sends thousands of young women to stores searching for these brands in hopes that they too will be able to experience these similar feelings. Once in stores, however, many of the young women are let down as their expectations are disenchanted. In hopes of conforming to these designer clothing, young girls become even more influenced to pursue extreme diets to achieve these unrealistic bodies. This often leads to medical disorders such as anorexia, bulimia, and binge-eating. This Ralph Lauren ad is creating a standard of beauty that is improbable, and detrimental to the health of young girls. Due to the excessive usage and manipulation of advertisements, people have been conditioned over the years to believe that achieving a certain level of success is only possible if they attain a specific level of beauty and physical attractiveness. The advertisers work off of consumer insecurities in beauty and fashion advertising, causing buyers to believe that they must achieve the standard of perfection shown by these models. The advertising world has also altered the average person's intelligence by making consumers not capable of differentiating between the real view of beauty, and the idealized image that companies such as Ralph Lauren have created for the rest of society. The standard of beauty that Ralph Lauren has created also corresponds to a specific gender, race, and class. The model shown is representing this “ideal” figure of beauty that has influenced our society ever since the 1950s. A woman who has snow white skin, blond hair, and piercing clear sea blue eyes. This luxurious clothing brand that people look up to and aspire to dress in has been stereotyped for ages in our society. This brand tells their consumers that in order to achieve the same wealth, confidence and joy, the model has from wearing Ralph Lauren's clothing, one needs to be Caucasian and match these same light features. Thus, implying to African-American, Hispanic, and Asian females that they are not worthy of wearing Ralph Lauren and more importantly, not worthy of becoming confident and happy because to the color of their skin, their physical features, or size. Aside from race, this advertisement is also setting a standard of beauty when it comes to gender.
Because the model in the advertisement is dressed in female clothing, it is geared more toward a young female audience. The model looks physically unhealthy as her legs are almost the size of her arms and her waist is smaller than her head. Since the model's body is medically impossible to attain, it is clear that Ralph Lauren has photoshoped the picture immensly, creating an unrealistic human body. As young girls become obsessed with achieving this “ideal” beauty, they become oblivious to what is more important in a person, and that is to achieve beauty on the inside and in the mind. This perception causes young girls to focus more on achieving distorted perfection, and less on learning to love themselves and the flaws that make each of them unique and beautiful. Young girls should aspire to become empowered women with vision, grace, self-awareness and self-love. They need to have respect for their intelligent minds and not feel the obligation to conform their bodies to what men and luxurious brands want them to look like. But, have bodies that keep them healthy and confident, no matter what shape or
size. The classic novel The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison is a wonderful example of the standard of beauty that society put on people living in the United States during the early 1940s. This standard not only impacted adults, but predominantly African-American children growing up during this time period. White baby dolls with clean white skin, and piercing blue eyes that resembled Shirley Temple were given to young black girls as a figure of adoration. This was a precedent of what they should aspire to look like if they wanted to be called beautiful, spoken to by the boys, and loved by their teachers. “I learned to worship her, just as I learned to delight in her cleanliness, knowing, even as I learned, that the change was adjustment without improvement (Morrison 23).” These young African-American girls quickly learned that in the society they lived in, they should learn to love these white baby dolls, because there would not be a change in their future. One of the young girls in the novel, Pecola was especially conditioned to crave blue eyes. Pecola spent hours “looking in the mirror, trying to discover the secret of her ugliness, the ugliness that made her ignored or despised at school, by teachers and classmates alike (Morrison 45).” Pecola felt that “if those eyes of hers were different, that is to say, beautiful, she herself would be different...Maybe they'd say, “Why, look at pretty-eyed Pecola. We mustn't do bad things in front of those pretty eyes. (Morrison 47).” Because of Pecola's desire to have Caucasian features such as her blue eyes, she would have idolized this Ralph Lauren advertisement. The model possess most of the physical features that Pecola dreams about especially, blue eyes, silk white skin, and blonde hair.
By looking at this advertisement, Pecola would be consumed with the idea of looking like this model, no matter how impossible it may be.Pecola longs to be accepted in society, admired for her beauty, and have boys cherish her, not make fun of her. By looking up to this advertisement, her goal to fit in will be met only if she can look like this Ralph Lauren model. Pecola comes from an unstable family, in which, her father is a violent drunk, and her mother works endlessly to make ends meet for her children. Because her parents are not always around, Pecola yearns for their attention and love. By desiring to look like this model, who seems to have it all, Pecola will believe that she can obtain the respect and affection she never
gets. If Ralph Lauren existed in the 1940's it would most likely be geared toward the white upper class. This social class aspect of the advertisement would also make Pecola admire the figure. Pecola comes from an extremely indigenous family that is not only considered inferior in the white community, but also her own black community.By looking at this advertisement, Pecola would dream to not only look like the model physically, but also dress like her too, in hopes of one day moving up to a higher social level. By fulfilling this desire, Pecola hopes people may start respect her as a person, listen to her thoughts, and change their negative perceptions toward her family as a whole, especially her father Cholly.