Dove's Beauty Campaign Essay

Some companies such as Dove fight back against unrealistic beauty standards by having campaigns that promote a positive body image

For centuries, women have found it to be difficult to live up and be the standard “runaway model”. Women have the pressure to fit in to be considered beautiful since ads and media have distorted society in how they view and evaluate beauty. The false representation of models in the beauty commercials have made women want to replicate them even though they don’t know what’s behind the editing. Even though this is a huge matter, companies did not stand back but instead made more commercials that self-degrade women constantly, except one. The Dove Evolution Commercial- “Campaign for Real Beauty” focuses on the way they change women sending a strong message to women about beauty and what it really

Throughout the years, the definition of beauty constantly changes. In our society today many children are told to be true to themselves, to be unique, to be who they are, etc.; But on the other hand social media and the celebrities on there are a constant reminder that there is a certain type of beautiful. The juxtaposition between being yourself and being what is “beautiful” has consistent grey areas and blurred lines making it almost impossible to keep up with what’s “beautiful”. The media, whether intentional or not, portrays this certain body image that you have to be in order to qualify as beautiful.

The dove beauty campaigns are again a perfect example of this, as they depict a digitally altered photo of a woman being presented on a billboard (Tpiper). Depicting a remarkable transformation of an ordinary woman, this video shows a billboard model being produced through means of excessive makeup and hair styling in conjunction with digital editing after the photo was taken. This woman is not natural. She has pounds of makeup on her face, as well as photoshopped touchups, and yet she is perceived by the public as the standard of beauty. Nobody is able to compare with such a carefully sculpted face, and therefore this establishes unrealistic expectations

Moreover, as Richins (1991) reports, women always make social comparisons between the advertising models and themselves. As a result, advertising images create negative affect and increases women’s dissatisfaction with their own appearance. Since those images are edited through the consistent usage of digital technology, these idealized images do not portray women in a healthy manner. Indeed, these enhanced images would give these young girls the impression that they need to be ‘perfect’, just like these ‘fake’ images. According to Reist in ABC’s Gruen Session (2010), ‘young women get the message that they need to be thin, hot and sexy just to be acceptable’ in this society. Therefore, by generating the wrong perception of real beauty, the responsibility is pushed to the marketers, as they portray women with this stereotypical body type as acceptable. In addition, as the brand, Dove’s tagline in its advertisement - What happened to the ‘real beauty’? (Reist, 2010), marketers need not market their products in manners portraying women as airheads. Consequently, marketers gave most consumers viewing the advertisement, the wrong impression that

This transformation exhibits how society changed in its perspective on physical appearance. This marked the beginning of men’s desire for what women had been calling the “perfect” body. Before World War II, money was not lavishly spent on the perfection of the body (Luciano 11). After the return of the soldiers, men had more money as women retained their postwar jobs. With women making substantially larger paychecks, men had the ability to spend more time and money to make themselves look like the models displayed in the media. With the new advertisements by Calvin Klein, such as the Mark Wahlberg, also known as Marky Mark, steamy ads for men’s briefs, the appearance of male bodies has intensified (Luciano 112). More and more men, now with the monetary means of looking good, are trying to achieve perfection with their bodies. They want to have the same bodies as those shown in the advertisements and, at times, will not stop until they have reached that goal (Grogan 95).

Society’s deeply ingrained standards for women created by the media demonstrate the corruption of self image as seen through ads from the 1950s that feed off of insecurities. History demonstrates the obsession with perfection by showing how women were viewed before and after advertising influence, “Men wouldn 't look at me when I was skinny… Since I’ve gained 10 pounds, I have all the dates I want” (Lewis). Ads such as this swayed women from the 1950s to 1960s to physically appear in a

Beauty standards are portrayed everywhere: on magazines, social media, ads, commercials, and even flaunted among peers. While the ideals are supposed to promote health awareness, fitness motivation, and self love, it unfortunately results in many unfavorable consequences. Women are constantly “penalized for not being beautiful and at the same time are stigmatized, even pathologized, for not feeling beautiful, for having low self-esteem, for engaging in behaviors like dieting and excessive exercising, or for having eating disorders” (Johnston and Taylor 954). Beauty standards are unrealistic and unhealthy to pursue, and misinforms the public on what true beauty is. While not all beauty image ideals promote negative feelings and dissatisfaction, many believe that the negative effects far outweighs any positive effects.

When advertisements like this overflow the newsstand, tv commercials, and social media, there isn’t a control button that could eliminate exposure. Additionally, the control of interpretations doesn’t happen in a vacuum when you live in social world with continuous messages of “beauty standards” and if you don’t confirm to those standards, then there are “fantasized solutions to [those] insecurities” (Bordo). The disingenuous ideas of immorality tagged to large bodies are a top- down construct, where the producers of such messages hold privilege and power to overburden and blame the viewers with such

Everyday we expose ourselves to thousands of advertisements in a wide variety of environments where ever we go; yet, we fail to realize the influence of the implications being sold to us on these advertisements, particularly about women. Advertisements don’t just sell products; they sell this notion that women are less of humans and more of objects, particularly in the sexual sense. It is important to understand that the advertising worlds’ constant sexual objectification of women has led to a change in sexual pathology in our society, by creating a culture that strives to be the unobtainable image of beauty we see on the cover of magazines. Even more specifically it is important to study the multiple influences that advertisements have

When researchers asked one hundred eighteen female, college-aged students to look at twenty pictures in ads from women's magazines, they felt a sudden change in mood after the pictures were observed. There was notable depression in the women, a depression that has seemed to hit many women after leafing through women's magazines (Key and Lindgren 11). This depression is due to the fact there are so many negative messages being conveyed in advertisements that are published in women's magazines. But who can blame the women for their depression anyway? When the majority of the ads in women's magazines show super-skinny models advertising nice clothes, makeup, jewelry, etc., one might find themselves to be a little down. Skinny models portray their figures to be the cultural norm in Western society today. How often does one find a model in a woman's magazine that is over a size six that is not shown advertising plus size merchandise? The answer is not very often, or sometimes never at all. If women do not see their body type being depicted in

Now, let’s get the facts straight about “Beautiful” people’s self-esteem. Our self-esteem has been affected by the “Beautiful” people. We either have high or low self-esteems and the environment that we live in creates it. At work, school, and home we are surrounded by beautiful people with high self-esteems. The not so pretty people have low self-esteems towards the world and themselves. Dove gives plentiful facts about self-esteems related to beauty. Dove Self Esteem Fund, company, in the article "Real Girls, Real Pressure: A National report on the state of Self-Esteem" (2008), analyzes that girls have a lot of pressure due to emotional stress with ourselves. Dove gives a lot of ethos to back up each statement said. Dove talks about kids and parents in order to get to kids and parents to be involved in a positive way. This article attracts audience as young kids, teens, and parents. Parents also contribute to kid’s low self-esteem issues. Real Girls, Real Pressure: A National Report on the State of Self-Esteem, commissioned by the Dove® Self-Esteem Fund, reveals that there is a self-esteem crisis in this country that pervades every aspect of a girl’s life including her looks, performance in school and relationships with friends and family members (Dove). Self-esteem is a key issue in the world. In the article it’s revealed as a crisis in the country and it’s mostly about beauty.

The Dove campaign for Real Beauty was the brainchild of Ogilvy & Mathers, Edelman Public Relations and Harbinger Communications (to be referred to as simply Ogilvy) and the project was known as the “Evolution” campaign. The marketing campaign began in 2004 under the corporation known as Unilever. This diversified conglomerate is the parent company to the Dove Company’s line of beauty and body products. The campaign began as a result of survey conducted in which only 2% of women believed they were “beautiful.” Unilever saw an opportunity to reach a saturated market from a fresh perspective. After hiring Ogilvy, the message grew into one of the most successful advertising campaigns in Unilever’s storied history.

Kerstin Dunleavy needs to determine how to maintain the Dove brand’s momentum. The key objectives and goals of the Dove product line is to increase market share, develop a strong marketing campaign, retain functional strengths of the brand,

Many young women in today’s society struggle with confidence and their body image. This is a huge problem in society and many people have spoken out against the influence of media on women’s body image. However, it continues to be a major problem and more can always be done to raise awareness about societies unrealistic expectations for women’s beauty. Dove’s Choose Beautiful campaign was started to promote the self-esteem of women and encourage them to see their beauty, however there are some criticisms, including the company using this campaign to increase their sales. Dove is selling a product with the expectation that confident, beautiful women will purchase it, however people still have the ability to resist the ad industry.