The Image of Female Ideal Body in Advertisements of the Slimming Product in Indonesia: A Critical Discourse Analysis

Abstract

Slimming products have been continuously produced, while advertisements used for marketing these products increase in number. Advertisement of these slimming products shows an image of the ideal female body that is promised to be achieved if consumers use the offered products. Advertisement of these slimming products becomes one of the facilities to spread and maintain an ideology of beauty in society. The ideology can influence and shape the perspective of society related to beauty stereotypes that are later made a benchmark in assessing a person. Many people are disadvantaged by these beauty stereotypes spread in society. This research aims to reveal the construction of the image of the ideal female body in an advertisement of the slimming products through three dimensions of Critical Discourse Analysis, as Fairclough (2014) stated. These three dimensions are the text analysis phase, discursive practice analysis phase, and sociocultural praxis analysis phase. Besides analyzing verbal and non-verbal aspects in the selected advertisements, the researcher also interviewed 10 (ten) women to identify the perspective of Indonesian women to the beauty discourse existing in advertisement and society. The results of the study revealed that beauty discourse, as shown in the advertisement, was internalized by women as participants in this research. In this case, discourse related to the ideal female body image is still persistent in society.