Shaping the Minds of Women from Head to Toe
Discount retailer, Target, has recently found itself in whirlwind of controversy after publishing a botched bathing suit advertisement, pictured above on the left, in Target catalogues and on the company’s website. While this ridiculous ad can be regarded as comical, upon further consideration, can also be thought of as a strong visual argument, that, unfortunately, exemplifies a plague that has been affecting the advertising industry. Women’s advertising, encompassing all products, drastically alters the models in the photos to illustrate to the audience what using this product could potentially do for the consumer, such as “you can be just as stunning as this model if you use this product.” Through Photoshop, this task is simple, and a model can be transformed into a what seems to be the ideal women: tall, slender, and effortlessly beautiful. Consumers see these ads and are convinced that this is what they should look like, becoming a social norm within our society. Consumers, advertisers, and companies are obsessed with having or illustrating in their ads this perfect image of beauty, resulting in careless mistakes in their ads. The Target ad shown above is one such example.
Without close examination of the Target advertisement, it seems as if there is nothing physically inaccurate with the model posing in the photo. Further examination, however, reveals the atrocious editing that was done to the model to falsely create the image of a perfect woman. Due to poor editing and in the vain attempt to construct the perfect model, her arms are unnaturally elongated, a square piece of her upper, inner thigh is removed, and other several poorly edited spots can be seen throughout the photo. Coupled with the severely horrible edits, this model is clearly not an accurate representation of what the average, bona fide woman looks like. As the controversy over the ad started to heat up, a influential celebrity made an attempt to refute this visual argument and make one of her own in order to do so.
Ellen DeGeneres, the reigning queen of daytime television, can now also be considered the queen of visual refutation. During an episode of her talk show, she addresses the controversy surrounding the Target ad by inviting the model onto her show to resolve the issues concerning it. When joining DeGeneres on stage, the model walks on with fake arm extensions, in an attempt to make light of the botched ad. This image alone, provided above on the right, is the visual argument that DeGeneres and the model provide in order to refute the conflict surrounding the ad, as well as, the “ideal” female body type. Through her fake arms extensions, they show just how long a woman’s arms would realistically be if the advertisement was genuine, physical representations of women. This exaggerated image brings the audience back to reality to remind them that this is not how women look or should look like. DeGeneres perfectly and powerfully uses a second visual to rebut the Target visual being discussed, while emphasizing an even more essential idea, that the advertising world insidiously creates a false image of the ideal female body in just about every ad produced, fabricating this false sense of how women should look. As Ellen would say, “Accept who you are. Unless you’re a serial killer.”
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Counterintuitive Fall 2022 
Could I please have some feedback?
Feedback provided. —DSH
Hey, Taylor.
You made yourself a tough assignment with this choice, since only a small part of it is actually a visual argument. Clearly the false visual argument the Target ad makes is the central premise of the DeGeneris gag. The show uses a visual prop to debunk that false argument. But you could analyze the whole refutation with very few references to the 3:24 clip. I haven’t read your analysis yet. I’m eager to see how you handled it.
Bullet 1. Taylor, you know what the problem is with the model’s arms and legs, but you don’t offer your reader the slightest clue what it is. This is a total failure to communicate. It is “talks about” language pure and simple.
Bullet 2. You still haven’t told us the arms are too long. Are the legs also too long? We’re not sure because you’ve only told us the “it’s physically impossible to have legs as the model does.”
Bullet 3. Can I try this one for you? Instead of acknowledging that their model is an actual woman with female body parts between her legs, the editors have clumsily chopped out a square block of her curves, not only neutering her, but turning her into a poorly-made doll.
Bullet 4. Even in conversation, you don’t want to say “as if having as long of arms as she has is normal,” Taylor. In even slightly formal academic writing, you need to find a grammatical construction that communicates clearly.
Bullet 5. From here on, referring to the video serves less purpose.
I haven’t watched the video since a few weeks ago, so I have to trust your interpretation that the awkwardness expressed by the host and her guest was deliberate and purposeful, but you haven’t actually described the mechanics of that purposefulness.
Was the girl uncomfortable because she has a ridiculous body shape? Was Degeneres uncomfortable because she had hoped to debunk a photoshop illusion and then had to acknowledge that she might have inadvertently insulted the model by calling her body unnatural or freakish? What exactly is the technique here, if you care to explore it?
You can make this job either harder or simpler, Taylor. Harder by trying to tease out the many awkward exchanges that are hard to interpret. Or Easier by identifying the Visual Argument as the Target ad, not the DeGeneris clip. Target makes a Visual Argument. DeGeneris refutes that Visual Argument with her own Visual: This is how long the fake arm extensions would have to be to make the real model look like her photoshopped image in the ad. That alone is the visual argument. The rest is comedy rhetoric you can either explore or ignore, as long as you clearly analyze the Argument.
Have I confused you or clarified the assignment?
Provisional grade recorded. Improvable with revision.
Is this any better? Since it’s in my portfolio already I know I can’t edit it anymore, but I just want to know if it is any better than my first draft. Well anything is better than my first draft anyway right? Thank you!
This is WAY better, wonderful, in fact. And while I did talk as if material could not be further improved once it entered the portfolio, the actual fact, and a wonderful feature of our digital approach to writing, is that you could be making revisions right up to the moment I grade your work. The only limitation is that you don’t know when that will be. I think most students won’t but they (and you) could. Without feedback though.