The Dove brand
is rooted in listening and believing in women. Based on the findings of a
major global study, The Real Truth About Beauty: A Global Report, Dove launched
a campaign for Real Beauty in 2004. The videos I posted shows the evolution or
transformation of an "average" women turned into an unrealistic
form of media beauty. The other video is of a male who is turned into an
unrealistic form of muscle and impossible body shaping. These images are
harmful!
Ads,
billboards, and media swarm our daily life and instill the notion that these
fake people are the standard of beauty. Dove is trying to push the images to
show what it takes electronically to make a perfect women or male for ad
campaigns. Society has shaped itself in some part to media's false advertising
of what people should look like. Makeup and hair stores used to be non-existent
except for the occasional Sally's Beauty. People are now spending paychecks on
eye shadow kits and foundations from the stores like Ulta Beauty and companies
like Sephora and bareMinerals.
The Dove
campaign is not harmful but highlights the harmful beauty messages Americans
see daily. One of those harmful campaigns was the Victoria Secret's campaign
called the "perfect body". A petition was posted on change.org and
ultimately forced Victoria secret to adjust their advertising. “Every
day women are bombarded with advertisements aimed at making them feel insecure
about their bodies in the hope that they will spend money on products that will
supposedly make them happier and more beautiful,” the petition reads. Another
interesting source is The Self-Activation Effect of Advertisements: Ads
Can Affect Whether and How Consumers Think About the Self,” by Debra Trampe,
Diederik A. Stapel and Frans W. Siero, The Journal of Consumer Research.
According to the authors looking at an object intended to enhance beauty makes
women feel worse about themselves. One way to counteract these messages would
be to just not see them. This idea is extremely hard and would take a
lot of interpersonal discipline to remember most ads do not display the real
person featured. Limiting your expose to these harmful ads may be the best way
to combat negative beauty and body advertising.
What was
your initial reaction to the women on the billboard at the end of the
first video or the male at the end of the second? How often
do advertisements like these speak to you? What are things you love
about your body? What does your body do for you?
