The New Skinny Can? The New Skinny You!

Whether you’re watching television, browsing the Internet, flipping through magazines, or driving by billboards, it seems like companies are always trying to sell you something. Advertisements are absolutely everywhere. Advertisements tend to target a certain group of people, a certain type of audience. At first glace, it is pretty obvious what a advertisement is trying to sell. However, once you start to take a deeper look at an advertisement, it becomes apparent that advertisements have a deeper meaning and purpose to them. They’re not just trying to sell you a can of Pepsi; they’re probably trying to sell you something more, for example a certain appealing life style. The above advertisement is Pepsi’s new ad for their new skinny Diet Pepsi can design. This advertisement is an advertisement for a Pepsi product. However, when you start to look at the advertisement more, this advertisement is trying to sell the skinny lifestyle. Pepsi goes even further than just being skinny. Pepsi is trying to sell being unhealthy skinny.

The advertisement is a very eye popping advertisement. On the side of the ad, the words “the new skinny can” are displayed. Except, the only real skinny thing about this ad is the model that is also featured. The model is wearing a big blue sun hat, a blue dress, red lipstick, and is also very pale. This corresponds with Pepsi’s traditional red, white, and blue logo. There is also a model pictured in this advertisement. The model has a very sunken in, defined, boney face. She is clearly very thin. There are a number of different ways and a number of different tricks the advertising company can use to get the model to appear this way. First off, the model’s cheeks are very sunken in to give her the defined bone structure look. However, this is a very clever use of shadowing. Unless you’re well on your way to anorexia, nobody’s facial structure should be that clearly visible to the naked eye. The model is also wearing a very oversized sunhat, which I believe the advertising company chose to put on her for a reason. This oversized hat makes her appear even smaller then she already is.  It helps bring out the illusion that she is extremely skinny and tiny. The oversized hat covers a good 75% of her face. The advertising company didn’t even bother to have us see what her face really looks like because her face doesn’t matter. All that really matters is she is a skinny.

If her sunken in face isn’t enough to make you want to shove a cheeseburger down this girl’s throat, the icing on the cake is her toothpick-sized arm.  Her arm is really the first thing you notice when you look at this advertisement. She is wearing a strapless blue number, which really allows you to get a good look at her arm and her extremely bony shoulder. Her arm is absolutely beyond the definition of skinny. Pepsi definitely takes home the prize for Photoshop 101.  If you take into consideration how skinny and bony this model’s arm really is, you could only imagine how the rest of her body must look to be considered proportionate, absolutely sickening. Her arm looks very similar to that of a corpse. The image is absolutely fabricated. It is amazing what a little bit of Photoshop can do to a person.

Advertisements tend to target a specific audience. While anyone can enjoy Diet Pepsi, this advertisement is targeting women. This advertisement is trying to portray being skinny. Women more so then men tend to become obsessive over body image and what society accepts as being beautiful. This advertisement is trying to drill into women and girl’s heads that if you drink Diet Pepsi, you too can look like this model and be beautiful and skinny. This advertisement is trying to twist the concept of what beauty really is. The model is also sipping from a straw, which has always been considered a very classy and feminine act. This advertisement is hoping to grab the attention of someone who may be dealing with his or her weight or trying to get skinny or stay skinny. I believe someone who cares about his or her weight and being skinny will look at this ad and consider drinking Diet Pepsi. Whether they’re trying to lose weight, stay a certain weight, or maybe they have a very serious body image problem, this advertisement is appealing to those earning to be skinny.

At first glance, this advertisement is merely trying to sell a Pepsi product. But when you take the time to look at it and take into consideration all the details about this advertisement, it turns into another “the only beautiful is skinny” advertisement. The world is full of them today. It is very sickening to think that this is what beautiful is now considered. This advertisement is not just selling a Pepsi product. This advertisement is selling a fabricated image of what beautiful really is. It is images like this that cause women and girls to hate themselves and develop serious self-esteem and self-confidence issues. We weren’t born knowing how to hate our bodies, but it is images like this that teach us too.