Reist makes a fair point about the hypocrisy of claiming to oppose an 'ideal' standard for women's beauty while glorifying the status quo.

However, I don't necessarily agree with Melinda's attack on the glorification of the ideal body standard.

There is a reality here, one that I suspect I'll be attacked for mentioning, but a majority of people are and will always be more attracted to healthy body types.
The same goes for women - how many women do you think find a beer-gut more attractive than a six-pack?

As Reist mentions "Hawkins says she works out six days a week with 90-minute cardio and weights etc and Jess says she gets “super strict about her diet” prior to a photoshoot with an emphasis on carrots etc."

So she works hard to keep her body like this. Note here that she doesn't say she starves herself - she exercises and eats a healthy diet.

Ultimately, the issue comes back to confidence and realising that attraction isn't solely about the perfect body. Believe it or not, when it comes to choosing a partner men don't only consider body issues.
One of the most attractive features is confidence. I do agree with sending out a message that we should try to be healthy, but at the same time, we don't need to conform to some ideal body standard.

But I don't necessarily agree that it is 'lovable's duty to do so. It's an underwear ad.

99% of us, men and women, don't have the perfect body. That doesn't mean we shouldn't attack nor appreciate those who do.

However, when it comes to advertising underwear, I guess I can't blame an underwear company for wanting to choose an attractive body - it is after all, underwear.

The emasculation of the father figure in girls life has opened the door to greedy advertisers and the porn industry being able to exploit the insecurities in girls growing up. When you see parents idiotic enough to allow their girls to buy ga ga or kylie porn let alone attend their porn shows you realize where the battle for decency has been lost. Melinda seems to be attacking the fruit instead of looking at the root of the problem. The national broadcasters are chief champions of degrading young girls through their weekend morning porn shows in the disguise of music. There 'freedom of expression' comes at the price of many young teen girls feeling like they must give every boy what they want and the then feeling used up after a number of encounters. No wonder suicide and anerexia among girls is increasing. It is not rocket science but time for the 'freedom of expression mob' to come out of denial. Unfortunately in the name of 'free speech' we will always have the defenders of porn because it exposes their own immoralities.

MTR

1. Jennifer Hawkins is advertising underwear not car tyres.

2. True, Lovable are complete hypocrites - there are plenty of gorgeous women who are either curvier than Hawkins or even less perfect but still stunning - so valid point there.

3. AND Yes, the food eating/sucking stuff is on the soft porn side of the debate, however most people are sexual and respond to this imagery and if this stuff gets banned then so does this:

http://www.tinyurl.com.au/t7i

4. How about writing more about people RESPECTING each other, rather than trying to control what we choose to view or purchase.

(About choice: I find Loveable bras not nearly as comfortable and flattering as the Bendon range - don't need ads for that just a good lingerie store.)

5. There are some posters here who clearly loathe women and continually disparage them. Then there are those who sexually harass in the workplace - which, BTW, is closely related to bullying. Frankly, we need to concentrate on creating a society where equality of opportunity is simply a given, not something to be constantly fought for.

99% of women think they could be better looking. 99% are right and thinking perfectly rationally. Why tell them that they have a mental health issue called low self esteem?

TRTL

Give me humility over confidence any day. I have no time for a bigger girl who thinks she is god's gift to men.

Benk

I suggest that you are confusing arrogance over confidence. Arrogance is an undesirable trait in either men or women. Think Rupert Murdoch or Margaret Thatcher, neither one could be described as humble.

As for humility, do you mean an honest sense of self or a subservient nature?

Without confidence, could a surgeon, airline pilot, nurse or any number of people perform their careers?

Here we go, Calvin Klein men's underwear advertisements to balance.

http://www.calvinkleininc.com/underwear/men.aspx

With men being the new market for fashion and cosmetics, there is just as much advertising 'objectifying' men it would seem, but no-one is complaining. Goodness gracious, where oh where is MTR and her self-righteous indignation when she is needed?

Then again, maybe the indignation is not needed sometimes.

Quoting Catherine Hakim, a renowned sociologist at the London School of Economics:

“All intelligent, educated women are feminists — but radicalised feminism rejects sex and sensuality. The thing that hit me one day is that there is no difference between the way patriarchy and feminism regard women who make the most of themselves when they aren’t the most brilliantly intelligent thing in the world.

“Not everyone can have a high IQ — so what is wrong with making what they can of the skills and talents they have? I don’t look down on Katie Price or Victoria Beckham. If you don’t want to pay attention to them, then don’t, pass on and read your Proust instead. The whole culture makes women who capitalise on their erotic capital feel less valued and less worthy.”

http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/article7100751.ece

It is always always amusing though, that when the MTRs cast about to blame others for the poor nutritional choices of young women they conveniently forget the preponderance of sites pushing vegetarian and vegan diets which are notorious for causing health problems for young women in particular.

Animal welfare and animal liberation sites are platforms for radical vegetarian and vegan activists to recruit vulnerable young women who for various reasons cannot manage the complicated diet planning, the rigid discipline needed to ensure they get adequate vitamins and protein and the regular blood tests to re-jig the supplements. Then there is the cost. For the overwhelming majority of young women it is disastrous and sometimes fatal to reject the cheap, first class protein available in Australia.

"cheap, first class protein"

Gold.

Rusty

Keep up the great articles Melinda.

Severin

What to one person seems confident can to another seem arrogant. Perhaps the most objective assessment is "is this person's self-concept accurate?" I suggest that many of the 99% of women who think they could be better looking are fairly right. That less men are dis-satisfied with our looks is something that women should be proud of.

Thanks Melinda for telling it like it is.

Lovable claims to be making these grand changes to our culture of eating disorders and body image issues. Yet they continue to objectify women to promote their products. They promote the tall, skinny, model type figure, a body type that only a tiny percentage of women have naturally, and many others try to starve themselves into. The images they have used are overly sexual, e.g. licking ice cream dribbling down, finger in mouth, etc. The message I get from this ad is: to be hot, I need to be tall and skinny, and overly sexy. I thought this was for underwear that was being marketed to women. It looks strangely similar to the cover of FHM (magazine).

Lovable could have used different models, of all different body types, heights, breast sizes, etc. They could have come up with a campaign that is more real than soft porn. There are many things they could have done differently if they are indeed trying to change our culture's unhealthy obsession with appearance. And this is what they used.

Lovable's talk of positive changes is all talk. They are a part of the problem.

You're observations are spot on Melinda - this is another typical example of a marketing campaign selling sex to men (luring them to buy the product for their partner in the hope they might look more like Jen H /'sexy' model), and to women (to remind them that they need the product to appear more like Jen H/the 'sexy' model for their partner). Its pretty easy for Lovable, the rest of our media/popular culture has done the hard work for them - they are just being 'cheeky', the new euphemism for sexualisation...

No wonder our society is dealing with young girls' self esteem issues and sexual provocativeness - their own parents generation keep sending them messages through media/pop culture that they need to be worried, but somehow us adults just don't seem to get it - what we do know is that good sales make good salaries, and good salaries mean we can buy more stuff, so of course we take the easy 'sex sells' road.

The worst thing about Lovable is that they are trying to pretend they aren't doing anything wrong - if they didn't harp on about all this self esteem promotion no one would be saying anything. Keep pressuring them, there are people out there who don't want their daughters growing up thinking they are sex objects.

honestly "of a marketing campaign selling sex to men" - really?

MTR seems to think that the images are targeted at men as well.
I really doubt it. My guess is that most women do the bulk of their own underwear shopping.

The validity of that view lies in where the add's are run, a piece of information I don't have.

Are they run in publications targeting men or ones targeting women? On the odd occasion I bother looking at women's mag's there is clearly no shortage of advertising in a similar vein.

My guess is that the images are designed to appeal primarily to women. Trying to make it about men's sexual interest distracts from understanding what this is really about.

MTR's distaste for sexuality and in particular men's sexual gratification clouds her understanding of much of what she tries to write about. She makes some good points about the double standards of the public claims vs the reality of the advertising but by assuming that the images are there to appeal to men I think she misses the point. Strange as it man seem to MTR women can have sexual feelings of their own.

Whilst I often have doubts about the ethics of a lot of advertising one thing they rarely mess up is demographics. Marketing women's underwear to men sounds like a hard way to sell a product.

R0bert

Melinda
The reality is that Loveable and other companies are not really interested in changing culture surrounding body image. They are only interested in selling a product and they will do that based on marketing research and the advice of their advertising gurus on what sells.

The only time a company talks about body image issues is when using it as a marketing tool - that is the sad reality.

We live in a time when spin and meaningless words gloss over the reality of what is happening underneath. Best always to judge on actions rather than only on what is said, and consumers as always hold the power of what to buy and can choose based on their own judgement. More and more consumers are opting for more ethical choices in shopping whether it be use of animal products, GM, sexual advertising (probably has not taken off as much), environmental damage and fair trade.

Men and women are sexualised in images selling underwear, I don't see it as purely a girl issue. There has been a rise in eating disorders in younger men albeit the incidence in girls remains higher.

It would be difficult in not to sexualise the selling of underwear as we are dealing with a near naked body but the Loveable Ads do go that bit further with the food/sex analogy.

Haven't we been going over and over this stuff for 30+ years? Merely restating age old issues about body image and clothes manufacturers is not that useful. It just proves we are incapable of devising solutions.

Pelican

Why would any of these companies want to change anything?

Women are told that they absolutely must feel beautiful. Most know that they aren't really beautiful. The companies are selling the idea that their products will make women beautiful.

If women didn't think that they had to think of themselves as beautiful, why would they buy any of this over-priced crap?

Mealy-mouthed feminist ideology should never be allowed to triumph over fact.

The lion's share of the health problems suffered by girls and young women come from food choices that exclude animal protein, namely vegetarian and vegan diets which are promoted by animal liberationists and others who put the begging bowl out - and do very well by doing so from all accounts. Animal rights is one of the new religions and there is very big money to be made out of it.

Does PETA care about 'body image' in its advertising?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/19/sasha-grey-nude-peta-ad-p_n_428763.html

AS for underwear fashion, it isn't just the marketers, what woman (well they are a few exceptions) doesn't want to look and feel her best? It is foolish to pretend that women are somehow brainwashed into attractive, complimentary apparel when there is obviously a demand for it. As applies to the little black dress, women buy for their fantasy of what they want to be and that usually has nothing to do with what men want.

As for body image, again, what woman (again excluding the few who might want to look like truckies in overalls) wouldn't like to be trim and taut, especially to impress her friends? If the will was as strong as the fantasy and desire, the blueberry muffins, cream and the skinny latte (a psychologist would have a field day) would not be breakfast and there would be women everywhere going to the gym as models willingly do for their careers.

Women are different to men in that they dress for the occasion and to look their best, even if that is simply an excursion to the corner shop.

benk
I don't know why some women will spend exhorbitant amounts of money to make themselves feel beautiful. Many of the most expensive products do the same or worse than cheaper products and have been proven to do so by testing such as in face creams and the like.

Don't get me wrong most women want to feel attractive - it is important to some women more than others and it is only natural to want to be attractive to your partner or would-be partner but beauty is only skin deep. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and most men I know prefer a natural look on a woman rather than a heavily made up version - not everyone does buy into these beauty messages but the message here is about eating disorders.

However all that aside (we all have to make our own choices) what is being pointed out is that in this case the company is pushing a cultural senstive line in relation to eating disorders but is not backing it up when it comes to advertising.

Perhaps Loveable thought a model eating watermelon and icecream running down their arm is a message that you can eat normally and still be healthy, afterall everything in moderation, but I cannot claim to know the minds of those who designed the Ad.

MTR is pointing out a possible contradiction to what is claimed and what is in the end, done.

I have to say I think MTR is tilting at the wrong windmill. Manufacturers and advertisers are going to go with whatever sells; including making outrageous and self conflicting claims.
What bothers me more these days is the evolution of the Pop Star, and the strange genetic link between vocal chords and external beauty.
What chance does a great (female) singer have these days, if she doesn't look good in a bikini or leotard, or less?
I can't help feeling we are missing out on hearing some great talent, just because the visual doesn't match the audio.

Grim, "What chance does a great (female) singer have these days, if she doesn't look good in a bikini or leotard, or less?"

You may have missed SuBo, how?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BvBkTmDWBA&feature=related

There are many, many more, listen to the pipes of these very successful ladies,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_45W-Lq7ftw

It is about choice,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lK7CVNyBALo&feature=related