Hair Busts Out or Boobs Bust Out?
I starting looking for ads in a Marie Claire magazine and I found a few that I could do an analysis on but that didn’t jump out at me until I saw this one. It is clearly obvious in this ad that the role of women as sexual objects is at play within the ad. The way that the woman is standing does not highlight the “lifted weightless” hair that is advertised, her hair almost blends in with the red background. What is highlighted instead is the “bust” of the woman. The words “Volume Busts Out” are written in bold and seem to point directly at the volume of her bust. The look on the woman’s face shows only sex, with her lips slightly parted and a hungry-type look in her eyes. In the upper left of the ad is a faint picture of what seem to be men taking pictures of the busty woman. This image reinforces the stereotype of women being seen as sexual objects and the idea that beauty is the only way to get male’s attention. Surely if the woman in the ad was larger and wasn’t busting out of her dress but she had beautiful hair, the men wouldn’t be taking her picture. I can see that this ad could potentially contribute to the “problem” of cosmetic surgery because of the emphasis on the woman’s “bust” and “maximum body”. Ads such as these could cause readers to want not only the “Vavoom” hair product, but also the “vavoom” body and bust.