Violence and manipulation of the self in advertising and mass content

Abstract

Advertising is a means of communication that, in addition to transmitting a message for profi, establishes criteria, ideologies and parameters of beauty, happiness, success, age, gender roles and more, which cause a self-conception of our place in the world and how we occupy it according to our own sociocultural statutes. These parameters provoke violence to corporeal-facial diversity and manipulation of who we should be. Among its consequences it is presented as a picture of diseases: anorexia, bulimia and anxiety, as well as bullying for not being similar to the proposed beauty prototypes. For this essay, the methodology: Visual scholarship for arguments is used to generate the connection between the written and the graphic with a brief compendium of photographs that illustrate the central thesis. To conclude, we expose the need to add in a schooled way, a method of visual literacy that allows generating criticism in viewers in relation to the propaganda content that we face every day, as well as creating and encouraging the use of symbols by Mexican institutions corresponding to advertising regulation for exposing images that are altered with the intention of spreading a misleading message.