In 2014, Aerie announced their newest campaign called “AerieReal”, which featured real women wearing their products, rather than the typical supermodel. They use women with stretch marks, cellulite, freckles, you name it! They also don’t filter, photoshop, or edit their pictures, making the campaign as “real” as it can get. While they are trying to sell their products, Aerie is also breaking the mold of the stereotypical body-shaming advertisements that are seen everywhere.
Aerie argues the idea that all women are beautiful, and that real is beautiful. With companies that use only women who are tall, thin, and toned, many women feel ashamed of their body and don’t feel comfortable in their own skin. Aerie is showing that women should love themselves, because real is beautiful.

I am drawn to the Aerie Campaign because I personally, along with many other young women, have struggled with body confidence for a long time. I remember constantly seeing Victoria’s Secret advertisements and thinking “my body doesn’t look like that, which means my body is wrong and not beautiful”. Once the Aerie Real campaign came out, I realized that the majority of women don’t look like the models portrayed in photoshopped advertisements. I chose this artifact because I knew it was something that went beyond just “buy our products”. It created a massive movement for empowering women and encouraging equality for women. The audience of the Aerie Campaign is something I have really been looking into, because especially now in 2018, women are fighting harder and harder for equality and women are becoming more encouraging of each other rather than viewing each other as a competition. The kairos of the Aerie Campaign is clearly seen, as the feminist movement has rapidly grown over the course of the 2000s; therefore, the campaign received the upmost amount of support from not only women, but many feminists as well. This also touches upon the pathos of the advertisement, as it inspires women and bands them together as a whole. The campaign triggers  feeling of confidence, and calls together women to bond together over their differences.

Furthermore, since Aerie is such a large and successful company, the ethos of their advertisement is very strong. Since they sell clothes that are made for women, typically younger women, they know all about how women and girls can feel insecure about their bodies, so their goal is to make clothes that make them feel confident! Thus, they clearly had an understanding of the issue at hand, and were a very credible company to get the message out.

I feel that because of the audience, the kairos, the ethos, and the pathos, the Aerie Campaign is an artifact that can be explored deeper than just a marketing ploy to get more people to buy their products. It’s more than an ad; it’s a movement.

Would you pay $168 for a fat-shaming sweatshirt? Yeah, neither would anyone else. The clothing company Revolve has been in the hot seat for the past few days, as they just released a sweatshirt that has “being fat is not beautiful, it’s an excuse” plastered on the front of it. While the company had not intended for the sweatshirt to be harmful or hurtful, they received a great deal of backlash from their customers.

Revolve claims that they were not trying to fat shame, but rather shed light on the hurtful effects of cyberbullying through showing a real-life comment. The original goal of this sweatshirt was to show how all women have been victims of hurtful comments and to empower women who have felt subject to cyberbullying. Revolve’s logic is clearly flawed, however, because anyone who looks at the sweatshirt is going to think that it’s just another offensive saying on a graphic tee, rather than have some meaning behind it. They also placed the sweatshirt on a “sample-sized” model, which did not help their case. Using a plus-sized model would have helped their logical appeal, because it would have shown a person who is more likely to have been affected by fat-shaming via the internet or cyberbullying.

Personally, I understand where Revolve was coming from, as the idea of the sweatshirt had good intentions to support and enable women to stand up against cyberbullies, but the company went about it in the wrong way. If they had used a plus-sized model, or had made the saying on the sweatshirt clearly understandable as said as a hurtful comment, then Revolve would not have received nearly as much backlash as it did. Overall, their idea was okay, but their logic was completely flawed.

When I first saw this advertisement/public service announcement, I really was taken aback on the effect it had on me. Normally advertisements do not hold my attention for more than a few seconds, but this was different. I legitimately stared at this picture for five minutes. I really stopped to think about how large of a problem climate change is and how much it will impact our world as a whole. People talk about climate change on a daily basis, but what is everyone doing to really help?

When people think about climate change, the major idea that they think about is how the ice is melting in Antarctica and that the polar bear population is steadily decreasing; often times, people do not think of how climate change is directly affecting them. This image creates a sense of urgency, as the melted water from Antarctica is slowly drowning the hustle and bustle of everyday city life. Not to mention that of this is all depicted through an hourglass, which presents the idea of time running out.

There is a strong emotional appeal stemming from this picture, whether it’s a feeling of fear, sadness, or anxiety, the viewer definitely feels something. Since all people viewing this ad live on Earth, all people are going to feel the effects of climate change, which triggers that emption that the audience feels. While (hopefully) the extent of the emotion won’t cause crippling anxiety, it does instill at least a little bit of motivation to maybe recycle, start carpooling, or just generally become more eco-friendly. I know for a fact that whenever I see this picture, I feel the need to sort my garbage and shut the lights off, and I think that anyone else who sees this will feel the same way.