Television advertising is about selling products. The people that make these products very much want people to buy the things they make, thus they pay advertising companies a lot of money to come up with campaigns and then to produce television commercials that will cause people to buy what their client is making; and nowhere is this more true than in the products that are manufactured and sold to women.

A long time ago, marketing executives learned that the best way to get a woman to buy a product is to point out a supposed defect, and then to create and sell a product that fixes that defect. Very simple.

Television advertising is a very tough business with a lot of money at stake and thus, advertising agencies are more than willing to pull out all the stops in order to get clients and keep them. Over time, they have become very good at what they do, but in the process, have changed the way that women see themselves, and it isn’t for the good.

Because of television advertising, the average woman believes that her hair is a far cry from what it should be, that she has various unpleasant odors that her body produces in her various orifices, and underarms, that she is either too fat or too skinny and needs to exercise more no matter what she’s currently doing. In addition she believes that her face is either plain or ugly and her skin is either too dry or too oily. In short, she believes that her entire body is in desperate need of help and should never be seen by anyone in its natural state or she’ll risk ridicule and a life of lonely desperation.

On the other hand, our average girl also believes that if she can get her hands on just the right products, she can overcome her defects and become the woman that she knows everyone wants; or at least something close and then she can cover it all up with just the right outfit.

The end result of watching countless hours of television and the accompanying commercials is that we have an entire society filled with girls and women who have had their self-esteem pulled out from under them during their very formative and crucial growing years, and who spend a very large portion of their adult disposable income fighting valiantly against what they perceive as their inherent defects. This is just not right.

Television has and still is ruining the self-esteem of girls and women across the country, and it’s time we took a hard look at this and whether something ought to be changed.