I was rather amused to discover that the bikini was inspired by nuclear weapons testing on the island of Bikini Atoll in the pacific, and was in fact, designed by the French automobile engineer, Louis Reard.
But this is not an article about the bikini. What caught my attention were the bodies wearing those bikinis. Women modeling bikinis in the 1940’s and 1950’s were much more curvy, by modern standards. You could be forgiven by calling them ‘hefty’ and I seriously doubt a girl with similar statistics would stand a chance of getting signed up by any of today’s model agencies. In fact looking through the decades it appears models are shrinking in direct inverse proportion to the actual trend in body size. Either the media is completely out of touch, or is there perhaps something more going on here?
Women's magazines juxtapose images of superslim women with recipes and sex constantly on their front covers. Ambiguity abound, women, and increasingly men, are being bombarded by messages that set impossible standards and a promise hidden between the pages, of better and more sex. Humans learn largely by association, and the media facilitates this by linking ideas which we process unconsciously.
Research into the effects of anti-smoking advertisements on smokers has provided some interesting insights into how we process information. Putting ex-smokers and smokers into an fMRI and testing their response to anti-smoking ads, causes the pleasure centre in their brain light up. It appears all those gruesome adverts depicting yellow gunk in your lungs makes the brain think “ahhh I’d just love a cigarette.”
The diet industry backs up this argument. We all know diets don’t work yet it is a billion dollar industry. Is there a correlation between the advertising of diets and the nation getting fatter? Perhaps like anti- smoking campaigns, diet advertising and a media obsession with promoting thinness in fact promotes the very opposite.
It is a fact that the majority of people tend to respond better to advice expressed using positive rather than negative language. Observe what children do when they are told they cannot have something or should not do something. Even adults when told something is prohibited often feel a strong compulsion to eat the forbidden fruit.
To the right is an advert from a company offering help on how to quit smoking (and incidentally or perhaps intentionally, also offer advice on weightloss) As a non-smoker, even I find this image strangely attractive. It could be argued that the diet, media and pharmaceutical industry are aware of the various research studies that question the efficacy of these campaigns. Hypothetically, they could use this information to implement an ingenious strategy of subtle brainwashing, disguised behind seemingly responsible advertising.
This I believe is something worth exploring further, for the ramifications can be far reaching. Consider the drink drive campaigns that rely largely on horrific images to depict the consequences of driving under the influence of alcohol. These are aimed to make drivers consider the dangers and consequences of speeding. If we put drivers and dieters under an MRI and showed them adverts, I wonder what story would their brains tell?
It could be a worthwhile experiment. If we discovered that adverts promoting against engaging in particular behaviours, in fact has the opposite effect on actions, then perhaps we need to rethink advertising.
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