www.whyville.net Jan 1, 2006 Weekly Issue



Freckle1
Guest Writer

Logos and Advertising: How They Affect Us

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Advertisements and logos are everywhere -- clothing, TV commercials, the Internet, shop windows, and more. Have you ever stopped to consider that advertisements can change your attitude toward yourself, friends, and affect the way you think?

How many logos and ads do you set your eyes on each day? Well on average, most people see about 3,000 advertisements a day! Does this surprise you? Stop a moment and think. Clothes (think Abercrombie and Fitch), TV commercials, the Internet, billboards, magazines, newspapers, the radio -- and trust me, the list goes on. Believe it or not, advertisements change our attitudes toward ourselves, and affect the way we think.

Jessica, Hilary, Lindsay. Do those names sound familiar? Celebrities are a a common tool for advertising. Just putting a Celeb's name on a t-shirt or a picture of Hilary on the tag of a plaid skirt makes it that much cooler, which in my opinion, is pathetic. "Stuff by Hillary Duff!" Is the reason that you want it because she is on the tag? Or that she looks so great in it? The thing that matters is whether or not you like the skirt, not how she looks!

Have you ever flipped through a magazine, and once you are through you feel ugly, or that you need to update? That's the whole point, maybe a lovely model is in a picture that is advertising a new conditioner that is supposed to make any crispy tangly hair soft and shiny, with a before and after picture. But before you looked at that ad, did you think that you had that problem? Often not. Maybe now you feel like your hair is hideous because its not as shiny as the after picture, so you have to buy it. Keep in mind that tons of products and time (not to mention computer touches) were used for that ad! You don't need to look like a model to feel good about yourself.

What about food ads? Let's take McDonald's for example. The "mighty kids meal" is obviously targeting younger kids. They also mention great deals. But does it tell you anything about all the empty calories? Or how nutrition experts say that fast food is one of the top reasons for so many Americans being obese? No!

Corol Moog says, "We have 6-year-olds wearing makeup, people younger and younger getting plastic surgery, and teens overly concerned about how they look. It is a diffident influence of advertising."

I'm not saying that advertising is a bad thing, it is good sometimes. But make sure that they don't make you feel that you need to get this or that to look good enough, or change how you look at things.

Thanks for reading and I hope that you got something out of this!

This is Freckle1, going to check her e-mail
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