Post: What's Behind Beauty?
What's Behind Beauty?
Our blog network is buzzing about a new commercial from The Dove Self-esteem Fund, which shows a model getting her hair and face done -- first with beauty products, and then with photoshop. Here's the buzz:
From Common Sense Media: "The 90-second spot lays bare the truth about what goes into making models and celebrities gorgeous. It will help girls understand the distorted picture of beauty being marketed to them day in and day out. After all, by the age of 17, they will have seen more than 250,000 messages about their appearance. And boys also need to see the artifice behind the almost-unattainable ideals of beauty that our media broadcasts to them at every turn."
From Packaging Girlhood: "[The commercial]takes what Jean Kilbourne once showed us in Slim Hopes, and does it all quickly before our very eyes. I have played it for all my classes and the students ask me to play it again, a second time. I love the subtle double-look of the girls walking by the billboard at the end."
From Shaping Youth: "[The ad] merely insinuates the damage and that’s part of its power. It doesn’t clobber you over the head, it leaves you freeze framed with that big ol’ billboard looming over the teens walking by. Once you click deeper into the site, OUCH! You get psychosocial factoids on the emotional toll it’s taking on women worldwide…"
From RespectRx.com: "The Dove spot ends with the tagline: 'No wonder our perception of beauty is distorted.' But it doesn't have to be. And Dove itself has developed fabulous workshops for girls, young women and parents that anyone can download, lead, or just work through on your own time."
Check out Dove's ad then give us your thoughts! For more on Dove's campaign, click here.
There are 1 replies to this post
Date: October 26, 2006
This is great. Our beauty standards are definitely extreme. I just read some stats about plastic surgery that said there were now over 11.5 million procedures a year in the US alone -- and I am sure an alarming number of these are teens.