In the print advertisement, Dove features a woman who is built thicker than the typical magazine model. She is standing in a sassy pose with her hair blowing back out of her face. Beside her face on either side is the word oversized or outstanding. Beside each word is a question mark and a check box. In this advertisement Dove is asking the viewer to select whether they feel the model is one of the two word choices or the other. Dove is trying to create a good feeling for the brand by putting an oversized model in an ad and giving the viewer the choice to select that the model is not overweight but is outstanding in her own way. They show the model in a happy confident manner that makes the viewer believe that she is proud of the way she looks. Dove expects the viewer to chose that the model is outstanding and with doing so attains the perception that the company is promoting a viewing of women for their positive aspects as opposed to the negative ones. If the viewer picks that the model is oversized then it is a reflection of the viewer and not of Dove. If the viewer plays into Dove's strategy then Dove gets the good credit, but if the viewer does not then the negative light is cast on the viewer. To create this contrast of viewpoints the viewer has to be aware that the model is indeed overweight. Dove doesn't want to directly point out that the model is overweight so they do it in a sly manner. By showing an overweight model next to the word oversized they achieve this. By presenting the other option of outstanding, they get credited as this being their opinion and don't have to take credit for achieving the other opinion for it to be contrasted with.
In the video Dove shows young girls going to school in the midst of many shots of horrific images associated with models, size, surgery, and the harshness of maintaining a beautiful image. These images of the thin models is what Dove is saying is the "beautiful" body by the world's definition. Dove shows the little girl to relate that they believe the little girl is already beautiful to them and doesn't need all the harshness involved in trying to look like the models they see everyday. Dove has to show that the little girl is not the beautiful that people consider these models to be. Dove does not, however, want to say that the little girl is not beautiful. To do this they create the video in a way that makes it look as if the little girl is the one seeing these models as beautiful instead of herself that way. Dove gets credit as seeing the little girl as beautiful and trying to help her realize this.
With this campaign, I do not feel that Dove has too much consideration in helping little girls throughout the world feel more beautiful for who they are. I also do not believe that Dove did much to radically change many people's image of beauty. All I feel that is accomplished through this campaign is that Dove was able to sell products to people who felt down about their looks or something dealing with the harshness of society in general by giving them a warm and fuzzy feeling inside by buying the product. At the moment the items were purchased some purchases felt good about themselves for just a short amount of time or like they were making a difference.
1 comment:
I agree that what Dove accomplished was on an entirely personal level, and not a societal level. Any campaigning that it does to promote ‘real’ beauty is negated by it’s promotion of beauty products alongside it. I might think differently if they were hygiene products, but it definitely went beyond soap and extended to purely cosmetic products like ‘firming cream’. In this, they are implying that in order to be beautiful, you should buy these products. As well, they run their campaign with women that aren’t exactly what we might think to be models, but still are pretty beautiful by society’s standards. I don’t believe Dove is very concerned about people; they are still a corporation mostly into selling products and making money.
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