In the print adverisement used by Dove with the "oversized?" or "outstanding?" woman featured, Dove advertises that beautiful doesn't neccessarily have to be this image of the thin model that the media usually presents us with. In this way, they are defying the beauty norm in order to convince us that beauty isn't only one idea. The idea of beauty encompasses many characteristics, some not usually featured in beauty campaigns, such as this image of the oversized woman. On the other hand, Dove is reiterating the beauty norm by using a woman with a classicly beautiful face and symmetrical features. It seems that the only thing that could be considered not beautiful about her would be her weight, and so long as they convince the viewer that overweight can be beautiful too then everything else about this woman fits the beauty norm presented by other mainstream media.
Also, the video advertisement "Amy" used by the Dove campaign doesn't even feature an image of a female, in this case a young girl. The campaign makes its argument about beauty by using a pathos appeal to women. Every woman can sympathize with the idea of not liking their appearance, and by using a young girl for the ad, viewers feel bad that someone so young and innocent would be so self conscious. Their argument is also helped by the fact that the girl doesn't appear in the ad, so for that matter, there is no standard of beauty to which you have to relate or live up to.
I believe that the ethics of the campaign means well. While they obviously have to keep some standard of beauty in order to appeal to people, they are helping to broaden the idea of beauty even if only slightly. An ad with people on it who are not pleasant to look at would not be effective advertising, but by slowly broadening that notion of beauty, they are taking apart that norm. When such a high standard of beauty is built up over time and massive amounts of media, there is no way to completely destruct that norm by one campaign, but Dove is effectively doing their part to widen the idea of beauty.
3 comments:
I almost agree with what you said. For print advertisement, I have an idea to add. The thing is about two words; oversized and outstanding. As you said this is true that they say overweight women can be beautiful too. But I think they also made some criteria about beauty. This was their mistake because they supposed to get rid of the criteria of beauty. The way they put two words made “oversized” as a bad word, and “outstanding” as a good word. This is not true. According to their main idea of the campaign, the word “oversized” has to be same status as “outstanding”. But I agree that it is still good advertisement to change the definition of the real beauty.
I agree with your perspective of this ad campaign. As a Public Relations major I can see the campaign from both sides. They are doing a good job at making an emotional appeal to their audience and attracting customers who may not fit the media’s idea of beautiful. When I was first introduced to this campaign a couple years ago I thought it was genius. They were ahead of the competitors in the cosmetic and beauty industry in terms of advertising and were going against the norm of celebrity endorsements. And I think in this case it has really worked for them. They are broadening the definition of beautiful.
I agree that this ad campaign is genius. There are so many women who feel self-conscious about their bodies, and this campaign tries to change that. This has never been done before, so naturally everyone is going to worship Dove for doing so. Feeling beautiful is a rare occasion for a lot of people, and Dove makes everyone feel beautiful in these campaigns. The strange part about it is that all of the women in the ads are still beautiful by western standards. They all have glowing skin, shiny hair, and toned bodies. The only difference is that some of the them are slightly bigger-boned and have larger frames. Would these ads have the same effect if the women had a ton of hair or weird marks on their bodies?
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