Fra reklame til kosmetisk kirurgi

Kaja Drews fra Inter­na­tion­al School of Sta­vanger vant tred­jeprisen i 2012-utgaven av Fritt Ords ung­dom­skonkur­ranse med artikke­len “Chin Up, Chest Up: How do cos­met­ic surgery adver­tise­ments in the wom­an’s mag­a­zine GLAMOUR entice peo­ple to seek phys­i­cal changes?”. Prisen er på 5.000 kro­ner samt reise til Men­neskerettighets­dom­stolen i Strasbourg.

Vox Pub­li­ca pre­sen­ter­er her Drews’ egen sam­men­fat­ning av arbei­det. Du kan også laste ned essayet i sin hel­het (pdf).

Summary

This essay analy­sis the cos­met­ic adver­tise­ments found in UK GLAMOUR, the num­ber one wom­en’s mag­a­zine in the Unit­ed King­dom. Tar­get­ed at women aged 18–49 the mag­a­zine informs read­ers of celebri­ty gos­sip, fash­ion trends, rela­tion­ship advice, and how to feel con­fi­dent (“Glam­our (mag­a­zine) – Arti­cle­World”). Although many mes­sages GLAMOUR sends are empow­er­ing, some seem to enforce a notion of change as they sug­gest alter­ing ones appear­ance increas­es male atten­tion and feeds a need for approval. These notions cre­ate inse­cu­ri­ties and a desire to change. Full page cos­met­ic surgery adver­tise­ments in the back of the mag­a­zine entice women to pur­chase cos­met­ic surgery, and the method of how they do so is inves­ti­gat­ed in this analysis.

The focus will be on the images and lan­guage used in cos­met­ic surgery adver­tise­ments to tempt women to seek phys­i­cal change. Four issues of GLAMOUR pub­lished between August 2009 and April 2011 will be ana­lyzed and the link between the adver­tise­ments and the con­tex­tu­al place­ment is con­sid­ered in an attempt to find how GLAMOUR sup­ports and con­veys notions of change. The sim­i­lar­i­ties found across adver­tis­ing groups show how they strive to build trust between con­sumer and ser­vice and cre­ate the assump­tion that con­fi­dence, hap­pi­ness, and love can be reached through phys­i­cal alter­ca­tion. In this essay cos­met­ic surgery is referred to mean­ing surgery that is uti­lized in order to improve one’s appear­ance with­out there being a dys­func­tion present caused by acci­dent or birth defect (“Cos­met­ic Surgery – def­i­n­i­tion of Cos­met­ic Surgery in the Med­ical dic­tio­nary – by the Free Online Med­ical Dic­tio­nary, The­saurus and Encyclopedia”).

Cos­met­ic surgery adver­tise­ments entice women to seek phys­i­cal changes through iden­ti­fy­ing a rel­e­vant mar­ket and plac­ing adver­tise­ments where read­ers have a felt need to alter their appear­ance. Phys­i­cal­ly alter­ing one’s body is por­trayed as a cul­tur­al­ly accept­able and nor­mal way to go about solv­ing per­ceived prob­lems, cre­at­ing a vul­ner­a­ble mar­ket of women that are per­suad­ed to believe cos­met­ic surgery offers a solution.