Campaign for Real Beauty
| By FEM - Nov 11th, 2006 at 2:32 am EST |
Dove has continued to impress me. Since the Super Bowl commercial last february - pretty much critiquing every commercial that surrounded it in the objectification and commodification of beauty - excluding normal people from the mix - I have been truly appreciative to them.
Their efforts have grown so much that an advertisement that hasn't even been aired on TV yet has been viewed over three million times. This version is about a normal girl who walks into a photo shoot - they then show everything that occurs behind the scenes to transform that normal girl into the super model that every other normal girl models herself after.
Basically, it's the movie: "Behind the scenes of the girl who sets you up for failure". It's entirely empowering that the ads have gained so much attention - and that the message Dove is sending is being so widely reached. Their commercials and ads (at www.campaignforrealbeauty.com) are such a positive contribution to the media of today - and I can only hope that they continue their success in reaching out.
Because it's true, "every girl deserves to feel beautiful just the way she is".
Their efforts have grown so much that an advertisement that hasn't even been aired on TV yet has been viewed over three million times. This version is about a normal girl who walks into a photo shoot - they then show everything that occurs behind the scenes to transform that normal girl into the super model that every other normal girl models herself after.
Basically, it's the movie: "Behind the scenes of the girl who sets you up for failure". It's entirely empowering that the ads have gained so much attention - and that the message Dove is sending is being so widely reached. Their commercials and ads (at www.campaignforrealbeauty.com) are such a positive contribution to the media of today - and I can only hope that they continue their success in reaching out.
Because it's true, "every girl deserves to feel beautiful just the way she is".
!
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Good to see that cynicism is still rewarded in this country with an appreciative public.
Think about the deep hypocrisy of their ad campaign. "Be happy with your weight! But uh-oh, you don't want any of that nasty cellulite showing. We just so happen to have a cream that'll help you with that. Twenty dollars, please."
My guess? Someone at Dove took a look at the numbers showing Americans spending an increasing amount of their money combatting weight and less of a market for the sort of appearance-altering products Dove makes, and decided to play some hardball.
The "Campaign for Real Beauty" isn't about a neutral standard of beauty. I don't think you'll see girls in their billboard ads with serious deformities, or monster cellulite, or terrible skin - the sort of things Dove is trying to sell you on itself as a solution to.
It's not about making women more secure in themselves. (It's safe to say that Hell will probably freeze over before women are generally satisfied with themselves.)
It's about shifting women's insecurities to an area that's much more profitable for Dove. Plain and simple.
This movie I am talking about shows that the standards imposed upon us by people who think women SHOULD fit unrealistic beauty standards - and the exposure and deconstruction of that commonly accepted belief is something to be applauded.
This part of your comment irked me tremendously: "(It's safe to say that Hell will probably freeze over before women are generally satisfied with themselves.)" The implication of your syntax is that we are inherently insecure and since hell will never freeze over, women will never be secure with their bodies. It's the way society presses anorexic, air brushed models on women as the standard to live up to - when we can't possibly walk around airbrushed in the real world - that keeps women insecure since they have impossible standards that they will never live up to.
Dove's exposure of that airbrushing process, as well as it's condemnation of that societal oppression of female security, is needed to combat the idea so commonly held that women are inherently less secure. We don't have shows where fat women are married to supermodels ... but you men - have quite a few. So, it's easy for you to criticize the societal standards you are held to.
Flack? I remember the response as being positive -- and I bet it was especially positive in their bottom line (no pun intended), which is what counts. They're finding a need and filling it.
Nothing is being imposed upon you. You have your own free choices when it comes to how to dress, how to feel, how to look at yourself. Nobody can impose upon you without your consent.
The most vicious beauty/behavior standards I've seen are in all-female environments. As the old but true saying goes, "A misogynist is a man who hates women as much as women hate each other."
For reasons probably deeply intertwined with human nature, women will on average probably not ever be happy with their bodies no matter how hard you or anyone else fights the culture -- because this feeling isn't only some foreign thing that's being imposed from the outside.
I'm not saying this is a good thing. I'd love for women to be confident in their bodies - I'd have a hard time dating a girl who wasn't. And yet, my statement is true and it stands.
Because that's what sells to us. It's the fantasy that gets us to open our wallets.
It also conforms more closely to the reality around us; you see a lot more beautiful women with homely men than the other way around -- in large part because men will pay money for beauty, and women will make themselves beautiful for money.
If there's a market for a TV show where the fat wife has a beautiful husband, it'll be made.
That said, why anyone would spend time watching TV sitcoms is beyond me.
""So, it's easy for you to criticize the societal standards you are held to. ""
I'm not held to any standard. Whether in Japan or America, I freely and happily violate plenty of commonly held standards of behavior on a regular basis, as I see fit. We have free will, you know.