Critical Introduction

We are four students from the University of Maryland’s Scholars program, and we wanted to analyze health and body standards from the 1960’s and today. We chose to do Metrecal’s Drink commercial and the SlimFast - “Yes I Can” commercial because weight loss products are still used heavily today and were also popular during the 1960’s. In our blog we look into why weight loss products became popular, as well as the similarities and differences weight loss commercials share from both time periods.Despite their time differences, In the exclusive  “1965 Metrecal Commerical” and the more diverse “2017 Slimfast Yes I did Commercial”, there was a predominant appeal to pathos and ethos in the effort to advertise weight loss products to their targeted audiences, and promote a quick and easy approach to losing weight while eating sensibly.

In order to understand the content of our blog, we decided to begin with audience. Addressing who the audience(s) are  is essential to knowing why the commercials were made. The audiences in both texts, people who desire to lose weight, makes the commercial worth watching. Without a targeted audience, the information we provide to readers will have no solid foundation because they do not understand how it relates to the general population. After audience, the rhetorical appeals, kairotic moments, and the major arguments were done in an nonuniform manner. We did not necessarily think that the order of the posts would prove the argument anymore or less. We believed that regardless of if we proceeded with ethos, logos, and pathos, the message of the argument would remain the same. However, after examining the structure of our blog, we’ve come to realize that the major argument would have been easily understood if we structured our posts in a orderly manner - two posts regarding the audiences of the texts, two discussions about the appeals to kairos, two posts about the texts' appeals to ethos, and two posts about the evident appeals to pathos.

Beauty standards and body positivity is an incredibly kairotic issue that has been broadly discussed throughout the society and social media networks. In our blog, we analyze the rhetorical appeals of two advertisements from different eras, in order to compare the ideals that are presented to their respective audiences. Not only does our blog reveal the marketing strategies that appeal to an audience, we also discuss the deeper meanings behind each detail of these commercials. From 1965 to 2017, beauty standards have evolved to include a diversity of races, ethnicity, and genders. However, these advertisements also show that we have yet to accept all body shapes and sizes. The people shown in both commercials, or users of the weight-loss products, mainly have thin, athletic builds. This is not the case for many of those who look to weight-loss products, so these specific representations of the “results” deceives audiences in both eras, generating unrealistic expectations. After viewing our blog, we hope that some of these illusions are explained, and that consumers of media, whether it is internet, social, or broadcast, will be more aware of the influence, and sometimes danger, of effective rhetorical appeals. Our posts have already received commentary that reflects our audience’s deeper analysis and understanding of the different aspects of successful marketing. We encourage our readers to consider how they are affected by advertisements, and how media is able to manipulate their perceptions of concepts like beauty standards and body acceptance.