I'm a big fan of Dove's advertising campaigns. When I saw the real women in their white bra and panties on Oprah, the models for Dove's Campaign for Real Beauty, I got tears in my eyes. Finally, advertising that says real women are beautiful, I thought. I even wrote them a letter thanking them for being the first company, I felt, that didn't try to sell women beauty products by making them feel ugly or less than. Even yesterday I saw the Oprah rerun on Dove's Pro-Age campaign (women over 50 posing tastefully nude) and the staggering beauty of real women brought tears to my eyes.
The infamous Evolution video (featured above) is a great tool which allows us to show our daughters the truth about advertising and beauty. No one looks like they look in a magazine. The thing about all these amazing advancements in technology, like Photoshop, is that reality gets blurred. As parents, mentors, and educators it's important to help girls understand that how they look in reality is beautiful. And how girls and women look in magazines, on television, in movies, and in advertising is fiction, created by technology and professional artists.
Above is a fascinating collection of Dove videos, including their newest Truth Behind Hollywood Hair Call your daughter over and watch them together. They are a great tool for teaching girls, and reminding ourselves, about the reality of beauty.
Visit Dove's Campaign for Real Beauty for more resources on how to make girls feel beautiful.
More posts on Dove's Campaign for Real Beauty
Beauty & Reality
Self-Loathing Sin Bank
More posts on hair:
Pink Hair Fiasco
Pink Hair Fiasco Take 2
Curl Maintenance
The Meaning of Hair
2 comments:
I can't let a post about Dove/Unilever go by without commenting: you know they also sell skin lightener? See, dark-skinned girls (in India and elsewhere) use it and are suddenly successful and attractive to men. Because their skin is lighter.
Dove may deserve credit for some of their "real beauty" ads, but as soon as the winds of consumer preference change, they'll move on to something else. And it may not be so pretty.
I also use a "skin lightener" by way of lightening the dark spots from my pregnancy mask or melasma. I want one color on my face, not spots.
I find it an ironic beauty issue, and a legitimate one, that white girls poison their skin with sun damage by trying to look darker and black girls try to look lighter with bleaching products. Ever noticed that white girl Paris and part-African American girl Nicole Richie have almost the same ideal skin color? It's interesting, perhaps all Mexican women feel fantastic about thier skin tone? Or are they trying to look different too?
Since beauty products are going to be sold though (and let's face it most of us buy them and hope they work), I prefer to be marketed to in Dove's Real Beauty way.
It makes me feel better about myself, pregnancy mask and all.
This is my way of voicing my consumer preference for this kind of marketing. Maybe other beauty product companies will follow Dove's lead. They should, Dove's sales have gone up 700%, according to some stats I've seen.
I prefer encouraging Pro-Woman and Pro-Girl advertising since beauty advertising is here to stay.
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