Month: November 2020

Simultaneously, I get some worthful feedback from my stakeholders about the posters I designed. Six out of seven said they can resonate with the pattern of body negative product especially the corset one as well as be motivated positively by slogans. 

More specifically, Mengqi Zhao (makeup package designer) notes that bold colors, cute patterns and positive slogans will attract her attention and make her more confidence if she saw them in public areas.

Interview experts

However, body-shaming is such a complex social phenomenon that cannot be easily changed by some concise slogans. Rong Zhang pointed out that although the concept of these slogans can be accepted by most of the Chinese young women, only a few of them can completely achieve body acceptance.

Overall, the results demonstrate an effect that such body-positive posters can only combat the superficial of body-shaming but cannot fundamentally solve the problem in China.

All of my stakeholders were satisfied with the unaltered bodies in lingerie advertising, they mentioned these natural images make them feel comfortable and relaxed. 

However, five of them considered NEIWAI’s image makes them more willing to buy the products than mine. because Asian models look more approachable and similar to their own bodies.

Respondents prefer the latter two photos because they can see the emotions conveyed by the models.

The lowest score for g is due to the fact that it is too direct and large for this plus size figure and does not show beauty.

Interview experts

As a matter of fact, there are two other reasons to explain why NEIWAI’s image makes them more willing to buy the products than mine.

Some hold their view for the reason of differences body ranges are displayed too straightforward without visual aesthetic in my campaign. Rong Zhang (women’s wear designer)claimed that her attention is completely attracted by the figure, which will distract the audience’s attention to the products and may negatively affect the commercial value of the advertisements.

Moreover, one of my target audiences (Xinyu Tang) pointed out that only part of the body on the photo makes me feel it’s just selling goods, but the emotions conveyed by the model’s facial expressions resonate more with me.

As a result, valuable body-positive lingerie advertisements should express positive emotions while emphasizing the beauty of different bodies.

Basic information of respondents

After receiving the results, I realized that there was a problem in the question set. I should not ask the respondents to choose the age range, but let them directly fill in the age to get a more accurate answer. So I asked them one by one and got their average age is 24.

Body confidence

The average of body confidence is 5.43, Only three respondents chose 7, and one even chose 2.

It can be seen that most of the interviewees used negative words when describing their bodies.

Body acceptance is lower than Body confidence, at 3.57. It is mainly external influences from society.

Alter photos

Almost all respondents are accustomed to using Photoshop and other software to beautify their images and make them look better.

Influenced by commercial advertisements

Through further research, it is found that their standard of female ideal beauty is 67.1 percent influenced by commercial advertisements. The present findings confirm that commercial influences are relatively high in the homogenous representation of beauty in China.

I conducted an online survey that contains 20 questions with two experts (Fashion events planning supervisor, women’s wear designer) and five target audiences.

There are 3 reasons I chose this way to get feedback:

• since many questions have no right or wrong answer, I set 5 graded questions. The location of the points column depends on which option my stakeholders chose for the score.
• It is more convenient for me to collect and summarize feedback so that I can better target one-to-one questions.
• Due to cultural background, Chinese people are too shy to talk about the bodies face to face. Answering the questionnaire without a time limit can make them more relaxed and have more time to think.

I build 15 questions in terms of visual, emotional, and commercial to get a better understanding of how young Chinese women feel about unaltered bodies in lingerie commercials.

1. Before answering the following questions, are you happy with your body?
2. Use one or two words to describe your body
3. Do you think you have achieved body acceptance in China?
4. What internal or external factors do you think affect body acceptance?
5. Do you use Photoshop to edit your photos?
6. What is the reason for editing your photo?
7. In your daily life, are you influenced by commercial advertisements protentially?
8. In lingerie commercials, would you rather see the real bodies or beautify images?
9. Would you prefer NEIWAI’S campaign or mine? Why？
10. As a consumer, do you want to buy the products of the above pictures?
11. How do these unaltered different/imperfect body images make you feel?
12. Rate each image
13. Please explain why you gave the highest and lowest scores to the pictures, such as what visual or emotional effects they had on you?
14. How would you react if you saw these posters on a billboard?
15. Choose your favourite poster and give reasons or suggestions for improvement.

I wanted to get RR’s advice on my campaign and hoped what I have done would be confirmed. However, RR told me that what I needed was not suggestions from my tutors but go to ask stakeholders to get feedback.

I realized that my biggest problem was always thinking of myself as a student, not as a creator. If I want to change the world, I need to talk to the world.

During the whole learning process, tutors always tell us to be brave. But I’ve never been brave enough, always wait someone told me what to do next. But there is always something that can be changed if I try to do something.

What most useless is waiting.

Thanks for the courage RR conveyed to me. After finishing the tutorial, I immediately started to prepare the questions for my survey.

Base on limitations of NEIWAI’s campaign “NO BODY IS NOBODY”, my intervention is creative a new campaign named “YOUR BODY YOUR RULES” which combined with the more inclusive body images and original posters.

Process Review

Firstly, I selected body images from Calvin Klein and Playful Promises that include five elements: skin tone, plus- size, skinny, striae and tattoo. Secondly, I used Photoshop to remove the brand logo on the underwear and the face of the model in the picture then changed the background to solid colors to make the audience pay more attention to the body. Thirdly, I combined body negative products with body positive slogans to design five posters (via Illustrator).

I looked for pictures of different body features that I needed from Calvin Klein and Playful Promises which include five elements: skin tone, plus-size, skinny, striae and tattoo.

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In order to make the pictures more uniform, I changed the background of each picture to pure colour to highlight the body.

At the same time, I removed the logo and the face of the model in pics, so that my target audience is not affected by any other factors.

skin tone

plus-size

skinny

striae

tattoo

It is hard to accept this was the last tutorial.

David answered many questions for me and helped to clear my mind as always. In particular, he patiently gave me many examples of how to do intervention and evaluation which were a huge help.

• Main Slogan

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The theme I chose for my campaign was “Self Cheers”.

After seeing my poster, David suggested “YOUR BODY YOUR RULES” is more powerful and fits my topic.

I think it makes sense that I’m focusing on underwear ads rather than feminist or spiritual empathy.

• Body Images

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David points out that bringing Neiwai’s model range more inclusive is the key.

Through previous research, I have known the shortcomings of Neiwai’s advertisements is that the bodies they shoot are too conservative.

The changes I need to make should not only include my original posters, but also the models’ pictures.

• How to make intervention

Since I have no idea about how to intervention, David patiently demonstrated how to ask stakeholders if it was him.

First, he will show Neiwai’s project image (A) and my campaign (B) to stakeholders at the same time.

Then ask them these questions:

Rate each image （ from 1 to 10 ）

Would you prefer A or B?

Which picture do you like best? Why?

Which set of pictures will stimulate your desire to buy them ? why？

If you don’t like it/them, why?

Do they embarrass you even don’t want to see them?

These questions gave me a lot of inspiration.

Last but not least, David suggested that I should ask more questions about commerical when I was interviewing.

Considering David’s advice, I decided to keep the idea about object restricts the freedom of women’s bodies. I want to combine them with Neiwai’s images to convey my thoughts.

I started by drawing my images in Adobe Illustrator：

Then I tried to use Photoshop to combine Neiwai’s pictures with my original neon Lights.

I showed this picture to my three targets (Chinese young women) and got some feedbacks: These images were not suitable that looked very messy and could not accurately convey body positive ideas.

They suggested me to change a visual form which is more powerful. I accepted and tried to change to the formation of a poster.

Then I replaced my original poster with object abstract graphs and slogan. Here I would like to thank my roommate Qian for offering advice and help when I make posters.

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Then I put the poster on a wall with a Neiwai’S image in photoshop to create a virtual presentation.