Can You Pinch More Than An Inch: Understanding Representations of the Healthy Woman in Special K Advertisements

Abstract

Stereotypical representations of women provide a critical concern to scholars in the realm of communication and women's studies, pertaining particularly to the naturalized and perpetual mass media demand for women's slimness. However the question remains as to why women's attainment and maintenance of the thin ideal is continuously necessitated within North American media culture. An ethnographic content analysis of Special K television advertisements from the past ten years reveals the latent cultural values that necessitate all women's perpetual pursuit of the thin ideal. While Special K is marketed as a dieting aid to be used in the pursuit of a healthy lifestyle, the lenses of feminist and objectification theories reveal a stereotypical equating of health with slimness for women within Special K advertisements, emphasizing the aesthetic pleasure that women's bodies provide for others rather than the benefits that women may reap from their own bodies; a sentiment that arguably encourages self-objectifying and self-monitoring behaviours among women. The naturalness of these mass media paradigms, as well as the latent cultural values that necessitate them, is a critical communication and feminist issue for which this study suggests possible constructive remedies.