In recent years the beauty industry has targeted men more. Credit: Shutterstock.
This summer a now infamous advert – posted up around the London underground - gained national attention. Using a slim, blonde bikini model to sell diet products, the advert asked women: 'are you beach body ready?' It was an obvious part of a broader advertising tactic: profiting through the policing of women's bodies.
The ad deserved criticism. May Gibbs, who organized a Facebook campaign deriding the ad, said: "We know there is no 'ideal' body. Everyone is different and everyone's bodies are ready when they say they are."There were widespread complaints about the use of an unrealistic, airbrushed image, and the marketing of largely unattainable beauty norms. Rebecca Field, a spokesperson for eating disorder charity Beat, noted that whilst such ads do not cause eating disorders outright, they ‘could have a harmful effect’ on those who are ‘susceptible to eating disorders.’
