Candice Green
Intro to Women Studies
“Real Beauty”
Throughout the years millions of women have asked the question, what is real Beauty? Back in the day this question was not as hard because being pretty was not as important as being able to feed your family. However today it is completely different; women of all ages are being told what is beautiful and how to get there by the media. The media has such a hold on society, and we see it everywhere through advertisements, billboards, TV, movies, etc. They try to convince young women that beauty is 6 foot 2, perfect hair and skin, 110 pounds, and a double D cup size. One company took a step back and realized how much this is affecting women and especially young girls; dove decided to launch a campaign for what real beauty is. They created two commercials that really expose what is wrong with advertising in today’s society.
The first commercial by Dove is called “evolution”. It starts with a pretty girl in chair with two lights on her, it then proceeds to fast-forward as people adding makeup and doing her hair transform this woman into a beautiful billboard model. Then a photographer takes a series of photos of her and one is selected. Then it is brought up in Photoshop where they again alter her appearance even further by lengthening her neck, altering her skin, enlarging her eyes and mouth, etc. Then it is transformed to a billboard advertisement for a fictional foundation makeup. It then ends with the statement, “No wonder our perception of beauty is distorted.”
“Evolution” really exposes the way models are made to look so beautiful in ads. If we all had a team of makeup artists we would look like that too. Those types of ads really mess with girls mind; the ad is telling them that if they buy this make-up they will look like this, when that is not the case. The model looks like that because of a lot of make-up and very good use of Photoshop. Dove did a great job with this commercial cause now young women can see that a lot of the faces they see in ads are not real, there computer generated. Ads take advantage of the advance technology we have available to us, so instead of using the pretty the model, they turn her into some super, super model that no girl can live up to. A lot of girls look at these ads of beautiful women and think, “what do I need to do to look like that.” They shouldn’t because most girls don’t look like that. Hopefully girls see this commercial and realize they don’t have to look like a computer image.
The second commercial entitled, Beauty Pressure, is also part of the Dove campaign for real beauty. It starts with a close up on a little girl and the background music saying, “Here it comes.” It then quickly switches to a series of advertisements of women in their bra and underwear (they are super skinny and very beautiful). It then switches quickly to a series of commercials and only a little bit of each commercial is heard, you hear words like, younger, smaller, lighter, firmer, thinner, softer, etc. And then you see a women getting fatter and skinner with different images going in between like running on a treadmill, eating carrots and lettuce. It then switches to all the forms of plastic surgery available like, breast implants, nose jobs, and Botox. It ends with the statement, “talk to your daughter before the beauty industry does.”
“Beauty Pressure” was my favorite out of the two because it really exposes why these ads are so wrong. And the reason why is because of their impact on little girls. The ending quote was perfect, “talk to your daughter before the beauty industry does.” That is perfect; it’s so simple, but so true. Young girls, especially in this next generation, are surrounded by technology and with technology come advertising. These ads can have a profound effect on them; they teach them what beauty is, when in fact that is not beauty. Surgery, dieting, and make-up are not the keys to being beautiful. Real beauty comes from within and just because you’re beautiful on the outside, doesn’t mean you’re beautiful in the inside and in the long run that’s what counts, that’s what is going to keep relationships intact and make you a good person. Relationships aren’t built on how you look, their built on other things like trust and heart. Dove once again does a great job of showing how the Ad industry seeps into our minds. They flash words like thinner and firmer and women flock to buy the product. Dove says forget the beauty industry; let your daughter know that real beauty is what you are inside.
The Advertising industry would not do all this unless it worked, because in all honesty they don’t care about how they skew what a real woman is, as long as they make a profit. There way of advertising is so effective because of how girls see themselves now a day. Girl’s self-confidence is directly related to how they think they look and how others think they look. “The Body Project” by Joan Brumberg really explains how girls in this era are really concerned with the way they look. I’m sure Brumberg would say that Ads today are a catalyst for this phenomenon of “how you look is who you are”. She would probably enjoy Dove’s commercials and would probably want more made. The pressure to look a certain way is very high on America’s female youth. Joan Brumbergs demonstrates the psychological and physical effects this quest to have a perfect body has on a female. Not only is it all they think about, some girls take on dangerous habits to obtain this body. This is obviously reinforced when girls are surrounded by ads telling them they are not pretty enough because they don’t look like the models in this picture. Joan Brumberg would support Dove’s campaign to show what real beauty is.
Enlighten sexism plays a huge role in today’s society; “it tells us that these beauty standards are actually empowering because they turn men into helpless, salivating dung beetles… (Douglas 214).” Enlighten sexism tells us that its cool to be obsessed with how you look because it’s empowering. The fact is however these standards are making us less powerful, this model ideal woman is not real. Douglas talks about how so few women in the world are satisfied and how it is so hard to get it because this standard of beauty is so skewed, you have to be thin, smooth, no wrinkles, perfect skin, perfect hair, and big breasts. She explains how the media adds on to this skewing it, by Victoria’s Secret asking us “What is sexy?” and showings us Giselle Bundchen is crazy (215). The enlighten sexism body is a Barbie, and your body is the female way of showing how much you are worth in society (214). Douglas hates this idea, but points out how it is growing faster and faster with every year. Check the stats for plastic surgery, it’s growing at an alarming rate and Advertising plays a huge role in that. They show us what body is right and we follow. Dove is trying to attack this enlighten sexism. They want to show what real beauty and expose the media for what it is, and that is fake.
I think the real question is: when did this obsession with looks start and why did it start? What does what you look like have anything to do with what kind of person you are? This Dove campaign is really trying to expose how the Ad and beauty industry have it all wrong and how it’s mostly fake. Maybe one-day women won’t be judged on how they look but what they have inside.
Commercials:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYhCn0jf46U
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ei6JvK0W60I&feature=related
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