1950's Ad

I was browsing the internet when I came across a picture of this 1955 Pepsi-Cola advertisement that I thought was relevant to my topic:

The advertisement reads:

"One look at this modern hostess’s sillhouette and you can just about guess the kind of thing she keeps in that refrigerator.

You’d know it must be stocked with the lighter, less filling foods that make up the diet of the world’s most attractive people today.

That’s how they keep those slender waistlines. How they stay so young-looking year after year. Why they feel so good, so fit for all the activities, all the fun modern living has to offer.

And it is to suit their modern taste that today’s Pepsi-Cola is reduced in calories. Never heavy, never too sweet, it refreshes without filling.

Have a Pepsi, the modern, the light refreshment."

It is basically saying that the ideal for woman never lets herself be full in order to stay thin (which sounds like a horrible life).  I find this ad so ridiculous that it is almost worth laughing at.  It would be so interesting to see if this advertisement had an impact on its viewers.  

This shows that the thin ideal dates back to at least the fifties, if not before.  I am still doing research on what has caused this desire in women.  So far, I have found that the thin models used in the media are a major cause for the desire for women to be thin (Park 2005).  So I guess that leaves me to question why so many advertisements require models to be thin.  I assumed that it was because the average person views thinness as desirable, so it would make the product being advertised seem positive.  My next step in research is to find the real reason that models need to be thin, rather than going off my assumptions.

Culk, Matt. "The 16 Most Hilariously Dishonest Old School Advertisements." Cracked.com. Demand Media, Inc., 18 July 2011. Web. 19 July 2011. 

Park, Sung-Yeon. "The Influence of Presumed Media Influence on Women;s Desire to be Thin. Communication Research 32.5 (2005) : 594-614. Web. 19 July 2011.