An ad, created by the Dove Soap company, which was part of its “Campaign for Real Beauty”, was shown on TV before being uploaded to Youtube. The ad, which uses time-lapse photography, shows a young woman having her hair and make-up done and then photographed. The photographs of the young woman are then manipulated using Photoshop until the result shows an image for a billboard that is hardly recognisable as the same young woman who was photographed.
It has highlighted that not only are the images in magazines and on billboards of many of the top models distorted, but so is our perception of beauty. Women (and men) of all ages believe that what they see in magazines is “real” and are constantly (and often fruitlessly) attempting to become that image that is presented to them as “beautiful”. The concept has started to turn the beauty and fashion world on its head. Magazines are now being pressured to indicate when photos presented in their issues have been Photoshopped. Fashion parades and advertising catalogues are now using “real sized” models.
It was written and co-directed by Tim Piper, The idea came to him after watching his girlfriend taking so much time with make-up.
Terry Poulton, managing editor at Media In Canada, the daily online newsletter of Strategy magazine, was quoted as saying, "It's saying, this is all phony. You can never look this good, neither did she when she started out. It's really interesting to see how that's taking the world by storm. And now it's been getting affirmation at the highest professional ranks of advertising in the world, because that's what this festival is. " (Raju Mudhar, 2007)
The ad achieved success at Cannes in 2007, winning the Grand Prix for viral marketing, also known as a Cyber Lion. It has taken many different forms on Youtube, and has had millions of hits.
It can be used by teachers as a resource when discussing body image, advertising etc, with young people, both male and female, so that both can see that what is in magazines and on billoards is a distorted sense of "reality".
Mudhar, Raju. “Dove's `Evolution' ad wins at Cannes”, The Star.Com, Jun 22 2007, http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/article/228160.
The advertisement discussed in your post is one of the most controversial of the last decade and has sparked many follow on and copy cat marketing strategies aimed at de-mystifying the beauty industry. As a strategy it is a direct response to negative press and studies in the late 20th century which highlighted the negative impact advertising could have on young women’s perception of their own body (Meyers & Biocca, 1992; Bower, 2001; Peck & Loken, 2004). The Dove advertisement is a favourite of mine, and brings to mind a quote from one female friend taking a similar amount of preparation time on her appearance, “ It takes a lot of effort and time to look this natural’ (Elsom, 2009). Despite a move to more realistic models in advertisements (Howard, 2005) and follow up advertisements by Dove featuring curvy ‘real’ women in underwear loving their bodies, the ideal of the perfect representation of a woman still exists within advertising, albeit , a modified, more girl-next-door version. At the same time as the release of the Dove commercial, advertising agencies and their media were publically criticised for airbrushing photos and imagery in advertisements in pursuit of the perfect female image – sometimes without the consent of the model herself (Womack, 2007). An interesting backlash more recently has seen Victorias Secret catalogue models airbrushed to appear ‘fatter’ and less anorexic, in an attempt to defect criticisms of unachievable body weight image (Administrator, Bodymatters Australia, 2011). For adolescents, attempting to establish their place in the world, and their identity, body image is one of the more important issues for them to consider. Is establishing or maintaining false , unhealthy or unattainable benchmarks paramount to child abuse in this context?
ReplyDeleteReferences:
Administrator, (2011). The Morning Show interview Sarah about Airbrushing Models Fatter, BodyMatters Australasia, May 2011. Retrieved October 28 2011 : http://bodymatters.com.au/2011/05/the-morning-show-interview-sarah-about-airbrushing-models-fatter/
Bower, A.B. (2001). Highly Attractive Models in Advertising and the Women Who Loathe Them: The Implications of Negative Affect for Spokesperson Effectiveness, Journal of Advertising.
30(3).
Elsom, S. (2009), Personal Communication, 10 January 2009.
Howard, T. (2005). Real Women have Curves, and ads, USA Today. 28 Aug 2005. Retrieved October 28 2011: http://www.usatoday.com/money/advertising/2005-08-28-reality-ads-usat_x.htm
Meyers, P. and Biocca, F. (1992). The Elastic Body Image: The effect of television advertising and programming on body image distortions in young women, Journal of Communication. 42(3). Retrieved 28 October 2011: http://www.mindlab.org/images/d/DOC828.pdf
Peck, J. and Loken, B. (2004). When will larger-sized female models in advertisements be viewed positively? The moderating effects of instructional frame, gender, and need for cognition, Psychology and Marketing. 21(6). Retrieved 28 October 2011: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/mar.20012
Womack, S. (2007). Magazines criticised for airbrushing models, The Telegraph . 21 December 2007. Retrieved 28 October 2011: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1573295/Magazines-criticised-for-airbrushing-models.html
This article reminds me of a blog I read about last year. In a backlash to wearing makeup because she felt she should, Rachel Rabbit White created what she called a “blogosphere experiment” where she encouraged women to ditch their makeup for a week, No Makeup Week. The experiment had considerable attention and over 110 women posted photographs of themselves without makeup on White’s blog. She wrote on her blog, “Make up is great. It is a powerful tool, a way to express yourself, your mood and interior life. But when you go without something it loses its spark” (White, 2010)
ReplyDeleteWhite implied that problems with women’s relationships with makeup occur when women feel that they have no choice to wear it or not. White doesn’t express the same message as the Dove Evolution Commercial: depictions of makeup enhanced beauty in the media are unachievable. She is not telling women to give up makeup altogether but to reflect on the reasons why they wear it. The gallery of photographs of White’s supporters reflect women with positive attitudes about their natural appearance. This is in contrast to earlier research on the topic. Studies show that society does equate attractiveness with success. People perceive that more attractive people have greater potential for success. (Dellinger & Williams,1997)White described an online study that indicated that eight out of ten women prefer to see their female colleagues wearing makeup and that they would prefer to employ a woman who wore makeup over one who didn’t. (White, 2010) These notions are expressed clearly in television commercials causing women to value their self esteem on perceptions of beauty.
References
White, R. (2010) Rachel Rabbit White (Blog), retrieved 3 November 2011 at http://rachelrabbitwhite.com/no-make-up-week/
Dellinger, K. & Williams, C. (1997). Makeup at Work: Negotiating
Appearance Rules in the Workplace. Gender & Society, Vol. 11 No. 2, 151-177.
Sabella,J. (2009) No makeup week: women pledge to keep their faces bare for 7 days, The Huffington Post, retrieved 3 November 2011 at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/09/22/no-makeup-week-chicago-wr_n_735467.html