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Real Beauty?
You
might have noticed those new Dove ads, the ones featuring six ordinary
women (i.e., not super skinny professional models) in white bras and
panties. Salon examines the ads in "'Real Beauty'" -- Or Really Smart Marketing?, questioning the sincerity of Dove's Campaign for Real Beauty when the product the company is pushing happens to be cellulite firming cream.
I'd also add that despite the ad copy about "real beauty" coming " in many shapes, sizes and ages," the women in the ad look fairly homogenous. Their heights are within a few inches of each other, they have similar body types (curvy but not overweight) and all seem to be in their 20s or 30s. I realize most companies probably don't want an unattractive person associated with their product. But I wish Dove wouldn't couch their advertising in this touchy-feely sense of inclusion or female empowerment, not when they're just going to show us more images of attractive young women.
For more from Stay Free! on Dove's advertising, see George Jetson Gets A Present From Dove.
Posted by M.L. Liu on 07/27/2005 | Permalink
Comments
MommyCool.com agrees that, thanks to Dove, it's refeshing to see women in real shapes and sizes. When girls and women starve themselves to obtain pixie proportions or are obsessed with losing weight, in general, we all lose. These ads free women from food disorders fueled by unrealistic societal images. Dove celebrates beauty with curves and it’s refreshing!
Posted by: PapaCool | Jul 27, 2005 3:08:04 PM
Being a guy who prefers real women over 14 year old girls, I used to enjoy being immune to "hot girl" ads featuring plasticy, Auschwitz-diet types.
Now I have to consciously restrain myself from humping bus shelters and buying this !$#@% soap...
Posted by: someStr8Guy | Jul 27, 2005 4:07:26 PM
What do you mean homogenous... that one lady has a tattoo! Did you see the tattoo? It's right there on her leg. The one on the left. You know, with the cool tattoo. She's the opposite of homogenous... she's... she's... wild and irreverent and different! You don't know what she'll do. Maybe she drives an old car, or, or, maybe she takes bellydancing lessons... I mean, you just can't know with her.
Sorry, I have to stop hating. Honestly I agree with all of you. In summary I think it's good/bad/sexy/lame.
Posted by: Steve Lambert | Jul 27, 2005 6:59:46 PM
Did anyone happen to notice what product Dove is selling with those images of voluptuous ladies? Hidden behind all Dove's supposed good will towards women is a clever marketing campaign intended to sell "firming lotion", i.e. an anti-cellulite product, to normal sized ladies. Although the women depicted in the ad are curvaceous, they are also smooth skinned, as in cellulite free. And while we normal sized women may feel good about seeing our body types reflected on bill boards big and small, we may also continue to feel bad about our lumpy upper thighs and asses – maybe just bad enough to go out and spend $8 plus shipping on 6.7 fl oz of Dove’s Intensive Firming Cream. Somewhere between 80 and 90 percent of all women, fat and thin, have cellulite. If you don’t believe me just sneak into a Marshall’s gang-style dressing room in suburban NJ sometime. As most women know, but wish they didn’t, there is no remedy for cellulite. Not Dove Firming Lotion, not running, and not plastic surgery. Could it be that a for-profit corporation like Dove is selling another unnecessary and ineffective product to women? Personally, I resent the Dove campaign. I resent the models’ ugly white padded bras, I resent their contorted poses intended to reduce cellulite lumps and upper-thigh bulges, and I resent being hawked another ridiculous product by a company that is now being praised as progressive by feminists like Jean Kilbourne.
Posted by: Jennifer Smith | Jul 28, 2005 8:41:21 PM
wait, did you just suggest that the ad wasn;t fair because there weren't any overweight women in it???
who the hell wants to see an overweight woman in her underwear?
not to mention, being overweight is a dangerous health condition. hey, lets have them smoking cigarettes too!
its a nice ad with normal body types.
are they supposed to make overweight people feel included and normal? i'm very sorry for the overweight people - but run a lap.
Posted by: hornsofthedevil | Jul 29, 2005 1:34:02 AM
Enough with the "real women" bs! I'm 5'7" and weigh 110lbs and last time I checked I was real. I am living and breathing. I don't have an eating disorder either. I eat normal food, so who can say I'm not real. When the average American woman is 5'4" and 140 lbs, that's not my problem. Women act as if it's okay to consume upwards of 3000 calories a day. To be 5'4" and 140lbs takes more than the 1800 to 2000 calories per day recommended by the food pyramid. So instead of having a milkshake and pancakes for breakfast, why don't the "real women" try cold cereal, with fruit and orange juice. Maybe then they'll realize there's noting "real" about eating over 3000 calories per day. Besides, just because I'm female dosen't mean I have to have curves. I love myself the way I am, and for Dove to tell me I can't be happy about that,well then they are just as self loathing as all the other excuse laden overweight women who consider themselves to be real!
Posted by: Melissa | Aug 20, 2005 1:00:32 PM
Just to tie this in with "big pharma" and "creating problems in order to sell the solution", I read that it is likely that some cellulite is a side effect of the smallpox vaccine.
BTW, you should allow people to post e-mail addresses in forms that can't be scanned by bots to create spam lists. Or is the e-mail address not visible?
Posted by: Paul | Aug 30, 2005 1:10:31 PM
I think the women Dove picked out are truly beautiful. They aren't too big nor do they look like walking skeletons.
Posted by: Melinda Gilman | Jan 12, 2007 10:28:23 PM
GOD THEY'RE FAT! I think I would shoot myself if I looked like they do. At 5'3, and 117 lbs I think I'm fat...they must weight what? 140-150 at least!
Posted by: Alyssa T | Apr 11, 2007 5:45:37 PM
