The infamous “thigh gap” has served as an unhealthy obsession for teenage girls, who diet and exercise excessively in hopes of achieving a space between their inner thighs when they stand with their knees together.
Target has fueled this aspiration by Photo-shopping a thigh gap onto the legs of already thin models. The models were shown in multiple photo-shopped advertisements online for Xhilaration swimwear. What followed was an immediate surge of angry criticism.
You would think that Target would have higher standards for its ads, considering the millions of dollars that it rakes in annually from consumers, which include the young female audience of this particular swimsuit line.
Though Target representatives have apologized for the insensitive ad and have taken the photo off the web site, the image is still engraved in the minds of teenagers all over the country who feel that they need to fit the mold of this unrealistic expectation.
Most (if not all) advertisements in the media today involve some form of Photoshop in order to perfect the faces and bodies of models. However, most times it is not as obviously and poorly done as it was in the Target photos, so it often goes unnoticed by the public.
Such advertisements are giving women the false idea that beauty is unattainable because not even the models look the way they appear post-edit.
But women are not the only ones seeing these ads, of course. The men who see these advertisements tend to view these women with unrealistic “thigh gaps” as the norm, which makes anyone who doesn’t measure up to these standards feel inferior.
It is unfair that women have to constantly be compared to this idea of perfection because it often leads to body image issues and low self-esteem. Unfortunately, when women feel bad about themselves, they might go to drastic measures in order to fit into the societal norm of “beauty” that fashion advertisements project.
There are growing numbers of women who starve their bodies and over-exercise for the sole purpose of attaining unrealistic goals, like the models featured in such ads. This isn’t a recent development, but it should be a thing of the past by now.
Young girls in elementary schools are already exposed to dieting and unhealthy body image habits because of overly-thin models and actresses posted on billboards at every turn. Women across the country invest thousands of dollars on beauty products, diet solutions and exercise videos that might never work or only bring about short-term results.
The nature of our media-based society today is placing an unnecessary strain on the lives of women.