Why Do Magazine Advertisements Idealize Women

In the twenty-first century women have become one of the most targeted groups in advertising. Women's magazines, often referred to as the "glossy bible" are infested with ads trying to sell women their product or idea. On average, when flipping through a magazine a woman or girl would see ads for cosmetic surgery, makeup, wedding dresses, perfume, diets, home cleaning products, jewelry and the list goes on. Women are also affected by the flawless, airbrushed and idealized models who are in these ads. How women are portrayed in magazine advertisements affects how women are thought to portray themselves, and because of this "idealized woman" women have had plastic surgery, worn colored contacts, developed eating disorders and have tried to
Much of the prescriptive literature of the period, however, decried external and artificial beauty, preferring instead to encourage cleanliness and moral living as keys to better appearance."()

By the middle of the 1880s a group of businesses such as, chemists, perfumers, beauty salons, drugstores, and department stores, began to inaugurate a "profit-making infrastructure for new notions of beauty." At first abandoning makeup as a hoax for "natural"methods, but after World War I the blossoming cosmetics industry promoted rouge lips, face powder, and eye pencils as "necessary artifice." Its governing message was that every woman could achieve beauty, no matter their class or
In the 1980's magazine advertisers became quite daring and their ads became quite racy. In an advertisement by Wrangler Jeans a woman and a man are playing a game of pool in a dim inside environment. The woman covers the majority of the foreground while the man is sunk into the background. The woman stands with her back to the viewer, exhibiting her buttocks in skin-tight jeans. She also stands with her legs spread apart and holds a pool cue, which rests slightly between her legs. The pool cue is a phallic symbol for male genitalia, which she holds in her hands. This advertisement is sexually explicit and suggests to the viewer that if they wear a pair of tight-fitting wrangler jeans, they will attract more of the opposite sex. Also, the slogan: "Live life to the limit in Wrangler", combined with the image of the woman winning the pool game implies feminine control. Since the rise of feminism in the 1960s and 70s, advertisers had to present women with more control and freedom in order to sell more of their product. Later, in the 1980s, another ad for Dim panty hose, presents a young woman sitting on a bean-bag chair in a dance studio. Her pose is evocative of someone experiencing an orgasm, which is indicated by her legs spread apart, her weight held up by one arm, her head tilted back and her eyes