Dear Commercial Department of YTV,

Have you ever thought how your cartoon commercials affect the viewers? According to many reliable studies, it affects negatively how someone sees themselves, can cause eating disorders by causing desire to be thinner, most are discriminatory towards a gender, and you actually say, on your website, that you can book a spot for advertising. I hope by the time you are done reading, you will already be revising some commercials to take out of your programs.

Imagine this: there are no televisions, magazines, or anything other form of media in the world. No advertisements, no media, nothing. No one cares about how they look or how beautiful they are. One good example of this actually happening is in Fiji, in a study done in 1995. Healthy eating was encouraged, and body size or weight didn’t matter. There was only one case of anorexia nervosa.  Then they got television. The percentile of people dieting went from 0 to 59%. This is what is happening to the world, right now. 1000 Americans die every year of anorexia, mostly because of what they see in advertisements and want to be thin, while commercial makers smile happily, knowing they’ve made a ton of money by exploiting the human brain and body. Just because you don’t make the commercials doesn’t make you innocent.

According to one study by Body Image and Advertising in 2000, by Mediascope Press, the number one wish of girls aged eleven to seventeen is to be thinner. Even girls as young as five are worried about their body weight because of commercials and media. If you were an eleven year-old girl, would you be influenced by today’s commercials? If you answered no, get real. Just think of all those commercials with extremely underweight models, advertising a perfume or other beauty accessory. The main two thoughts that pass through a viewer’s brain when they watch that are: I want to buy that product because that model is in it, and, I want to be just like that model, who’s thin and perfect. But you know what? That model is fake, computer-edited and so full of plastic-surgery, that smile is only half-real. Wow. What a great message that is to send.

And about gender discrimination:  A study showed that in cartoon commercials- which is including YTV- 50% of commercials aimed at girls spoke about physical attractiveness, and that’s just actually said something, not shown something. However, none of the commercials aimed at boys talked about physical attractiveness. The same study showed that in 50% of commercials with boys, boys acted aggressively, while none of the girls did. Also, only 7% of the characters in the commercials were male.

On your advertising site, it says, “Weird on Wheels (W.O.W.) YTVs high-energy traveling road show, allows thousands of kids across Canada to experience YOUR BRAND within a live & interactive YTV environment,” and,  “Make sure YTV is part of your kid & tween media buy.” Not only are you advertising your own advertising, you’re asking companies to put their ads in your programs. And your W.O.W. program isn’t even a real program; it’s just a hook to get kids looking at your sponsors.

I hope you will start to think about how your advertising affects children, tweens and the world.