A couple weeks ago in my health class, we got an assignment to research positive and negative fitness advertisements. I ended up looking at fitness magazine covers, and I was floored by all of the negative, unrealistic and revealing images there are of both men and women on the covers of magazines. Magazines shouldn’t photoshop and print pictures of men and women because they set unrealistic standards for people that can never be reached. In today’s society you see sex being advertised everywhere. Sex sells. You can see it in movies, TV shows and commercials. Now, you can even read it in magazines and chapter books. One magazine in particular that I found online had a picture of both a man and a woman standing close to each other. The man was extremely muscular and he was flexing to show off his bulging biceps and quadriceps. The woman was muscular and toned as well, and was wearing an extremely skimpy bikini bathing suit that plainly revealed her breasts and abs. Also, both the man and the woman on the front cover were tanned and photoshopped so much, that their skin was orange. They looked like living carrots. I don’t understand why magazines feel the need to go that much over the top to try and sell their products. Half the time, the people on the front cover look so unrealistically muscular that they look fake. What I also don’t understand is why people buy a magazine cover with a person on the front that is obviously photoshopped! To me, that undermines the whole entire inside of the magazine. How am I supposed to trust that this magazine is really promising workouts and healthy meals so you can look like the person on the front cover if they’re obviously photoshopped?
Another problem that I have with this particular magazine cover is that the man is half naked and so is the woman. The man has no shirt so he can flex and show off his bulging abdominals, and the woman is wearing the skimpiest bathing suit you can possibly find to show off her breasts. Many magazines use the ploy of sex to get you to buy their products. If magazines are promising models and workouts inside, people may not even read the magazine for their fitness but jut look at it for the pictures inside. Because of Photoshop, people are exposed to unrealistic sexual images. I only wish that magazines would publish their workouts and healthy meals, with a toned person that wears more clothing. Every body type is different, and not everybody’s body works the same way. To be fit and healthy, doesn’t mean that you have to be super skinny or extremely muscular. One component of being healthy is loving the body that you’ve been given. People don’t have to meet the high standards of society to be healthy because we are all different, and we shouldn’t have to set our goals to be the same as muscular, orange people.
Thanks for reading!
Healthy Living 