The previous post was of course about Corporate Responsibility (you avid readers, you 🙂 ) and I thought I’d speak a little about my own responsibilities to the world, as a woman in business, and potentially as a marketer.
Although I don’t have a job to call my own just yet, I hope to be working in a sales or marketing position, which means I would be held responsible for targeting segments of the population to buy the product or service I was offering. Now, I’ve spoken a little about my thoughts about the targeting of these messages (Market for Donations), but what about the messages themselves?
As part of the Women in Business “Breaking Through the Glass Ceiling Conference” I helped plan at Villanova this week, we heard from our keynote speaker, Caitlin Boyle of OperationBeautiful.com. In her presentation, she talked about marketer’s responsibility to portray celebrities in their true form, and that changing celebrities’ bodies in magazines gives false body images to girls and women around the world. She gave multiple examples of different things ranging from computerized smaller waists, removing cellulite, and even washing out women of color. Since this was a Women in Business conference, she asked for our opinion as marketers.
Although I wasn’t able to formulate a response at that time, I’m able to now- I think that the industry as a whole would have to change for there to be a wide acceptance of untouched photos. Because celebrities are so conscious of their own body image, and if other magazines continue to airbrush them, it might hard to continue to do well in the business without agreeing to change the photos. I do think that the “no-make-up” and “no touch up” issues of magazines sell well because they are a niche market of “real” celebrities. The problem is that few celebrities will agree to do this, therefore it won’t become main stream.
As an entry-level position, it would be hard to make a difference in the cover photographs picked for issues, but hopefully I could begin to influence smaller articles relaying to self confidence, and eventually try to persuade pictures to be used in the issues to display a real healthy role model. As I’d work my way up, I’d like to say that I would try to change the way pictures in magazines worked, but I think it’s something that really has to come from the demanding creative minds of magazines and the celebrities themselves. Honestly, all I can think of is The Devil Wears Prada and how no one really had any input except Anna Wintour!
What I can do, not only as a marketer, or a woman in business, but truly as a confident woman, is to serve as a role model and a mentor to women around me. Although women can aspire to be like celebrities, it’s truly the people IN your life that make a an impact on your thoughts and actions. Although my friends enjoy poking fun at each other for one reason or another out of love, we all encourage one another to follow our dreams. I must also admit, that we’ve become to have a silly mantra about our house (sometimes said in funny voices, and is also now our Wireless Network name) that we are “SMART & PRETTY & AWESOME”. Having a supportive network and personal role models is really what will help young women feel better about themselves, and I hope I can impact someone else to feel confident about themselves.
Thanks again to Caitlin Boyle to speaking to us on campus, and I encourage you all to be inspired at OperationBeautiful.com