Blog #3

Kim Kardashian is one of the most synonymously sexualized faces in today's culture. Her carefully shaped body exemplifies the way in which many women attempt to present themselves today. She uses this great influence to her advantage by promoting a number of different products, many of which with blatant disregard for the messaging promoting such a product would send. This product and ad, however, stands out particularly to me. Appetite suppressing lollipops are a prime example of products targeting women's' body insecurities birthed by societal expectations of them. The whole point of them is to lose weight and "skinny," or at least skinny and curvy has been the woman's body norm of recent years. Not only is the product itself promote the sexualization of women but the way in which she's presenting it does as well. Suggestively caressing the lollipop in her mouth while seemingly wearing no clothes at all is about as sexualized as she could have gone with it. An average woman scrolling through her instagram feed seeing this ad is sure to feel anxiety in at least one of two ways. Either towards the fact that they feel inferior to Kim's sex appeal and want to look more like her, or by the product itself that holds the promise of possible weight loss when they may have already been self conscious of their own. Another even greater impact of this ad is who will all see it. If this were a full paged Vanity Fair ad I would imagine that the viewers of it would be at least of age to have some sort of body confidence most likely. However, the fact that this is just a post on her instagram meaning that anyone with an instagram account can see it, and that includes young impressionable girls. Seeing a woman that I am sure many of them look up to promoting such a product is sure to push that girl into believing that is what she should look like someday. I know that she has received public backlash from this advertisement and I am personally glad for it. It is exactly what women of any age don't need and that's clouding their judgement of themselves. I hope that because of this backlash we see a decline in blatantly sexualized ads such as this one.