Soda - Keeping Curious

I have just been checking our site stats and this week our blog has had 14 visits from the Unilever network. Unilever is of course Dove’s parent company. I also noticed that the Dove videos on YouTube seem to have a lot of comments from someone claiming to be a Dove employee. This would suggest that Dove are taking the time to find out what the internet community thinks about their new advertising campaigns and are keen to get feedback from everyday people like you and me. Good on you Dove, another string in your friendly advertising bow!

Whilst it’s refreshing to see a major brand like Dove promoting beauty in a more realistic and responsible way, it’s a little worrying that it’s a multinational (Dove is a Unilever brand) that’s sparking the debate over ‘what is beauty’?

I agree with Becky’s blog entry, beauty is something that’s been revered and aspired to since the dawn of time. The pursuit of beauty is a part of every culture and always has been. In many ways that’s a positive thing of course. Anthropologists would say that physical attractiveness signifies health and fertility, whilst culturally, the aesthetic debate over ‘what is beautiful’ has inspired countless artists, poets and philosophers. Like Becky, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the pursuit of beauty in this sense, it’s a part of what sets humans apart, emotionally and intellectually.

The trouble is, that now, beauty isn’t just an aesthetic ideal, it’s a billion pound global industry. So when Dove sparks the debate over ‘real beauty’ it’s not doing it from a philosophical point of view, it’s doing it to sell more products. That’s not to say I don’t like the campaign - and if it makes a difference to the way that young girls and women feel about themselves then that’s all good. The point I’m trying to make is that whilst beauty sells, the debate over ‘what is beautiful’ is always going to be influenced by the big players, that handful of multinationals that control the billion pound beauty purse.

The debate is always going to be interesting though, on the one hand, there’s the rise and rise of cosmetic surgery and products designed to help us look younger, from anti-wrinkle creams to Botox. And on the other, a growing population of older people that beauty brands can’t afford to ignore. To be fair to Dove, they’ve already included older models in their campaigns, and this is surely something that ‘clever’ brands will have to consider if they’re to keep up with changing trends in society. I have no doubt though, that the cult of youth will continue to thrive, with women in particular, under pressure to look young for as long as possible.

I blogged about advertising to women some time ago. Today I took a look at Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty. There are a couple of videos on YouTube I’d like to talk about. The first basically shows a model being done up and photoshopped until the face that appears in the ad is virtually unrecognisable. Although it’s interesting to see how photographs are retouched for ads, this video is a little…well, flat.

Don’t we all already know that models and actresses are often made up and photoshopped to within an inch of their lives? So what? They are a hell of a lot more beautiful than the average woman to begin with. Surely that’s missing the point. The fact that women are judged on beauty in the first place is what needs to be considered.

Some time ago Steph directed me to an article in the Guardian, where the writer Ellie Levenson assures the readers that we need to realise “it’s OK to be ugly”. We must move “away from holding beauty up as an attribute to be valued above all others and moving towards accepting that beauty, ugliness, and everything in between is of equal worth”. She suggests placing more value on traits such as tolerance and kindness, which are “qualities that all can achieve and that are worth far more than a pretty face”.

Unfortunately, she misses the point. The very fact that beauty is not attainable by all is what makes it so valued and precious. Everyone likes looking at beautiful faces and there is nothing wrong with that at all. It’s like looking at a beautiful piece of art or a fantastic sunset.

However, the danger is when girls start to get the feeling that these beautiful freaks of nature are what we should all look like. The second video from the Dove campaign makes me sad. When girls as young as this are already having their self esteem whittled away by peers and advertising’s unattainable images, surely something is wrong.

Physical beauty is enchanting and alluring, but most of us don’t live in that rareifed world where your face is your fortune. What I would like to see is a world where people can accept that we all like looking at beautiful faces, that’s fine, we shouldn’t try to deny beauty’s allure. But we should also not forget that to most of us it just shouldn’t be as relevant as we are told.

Vogue Italia have released a 15 picture promotional pictorial named “State of Emergency”. Most of the 15 images are a typically oh-so-shocking tableaux of beautiful women being arrested and abused by male police. Of course the images are appealing, the women are beautiful, they look great while being strip searched and getting their throats stamped on. But, like so much advertising, it leaves somewhat of a bitter taste in my mouth. Presumably, this shoot is aimed at women…but, like so much women’s advertising, it is framed within the male gaze.

I mean, it’s bad enough that the advertising of many products aimed at men objectify and stereotype women, I don’t think there is much we can do about that. But why do products that advertise to women have to do the same thing? It makes me sad to think that what now appeals to women about an image for themselves is essentially something that is aimed at men.

Recently I read an article named When Sex isn’t Sexy by all female marketing agency 3iying. They talk about the teen market and how “girls cringe at overtly sexual ads, yet paradoxically, marketing campaigns targeted at teen girls are sex-obsessed.” I was really impressed with the ethos of this agency and it gave me hope that perhaps the next generation of girls (the girls in the agency are all between 15 and 25) will find new ways to appeal to women on our own level. But until then, I am afraid the male view of sex still sells.

Source: Adrants

Edit: And yet I would still rather look at these images than, for example, Dove’s innovative Campaign for Real Beauty…I am just as indoctrinated as everyone else and I don’t like it one bit!

Edit 2: Actually, the Campaign for Real Beauty site is pretty interesting too, especially the nicely done presentations and image gallery. And infinitely more fulfilling/less depressing once you get into it! I might even blog about it tomorrow…

Edit 3: Actually I won’t because I have the day off. Hee!

It seems to be a pretty universal truth that women dread turning into their mothers. I helped run a focus group yesterday, to find out what motivates women to buy underwear, and it was a theme that kept cropping up time and time again! For instance, any brand that we associated with our mothers got unceremoniously shelved, even if, in reality, the brand had moved on. Even M&S’s valiant efforts to transform and discard their ‘mumsy’ image had sparked more than one panic attack…Oh my God, I’m shopping at M&S, and not just for food…are the clothes really more fashionable or am I…turning into my mother! Luckily for M&S, it seems as if brands like Per Una have done the trick but it’s interesting to think that the desire to avoid becoming our mothers actually dictates what we buy.

No doubt psychologists would have plenty to say on the subject but I wonder what it is that fills us with such dread? Is it the idea of getting older, reflected by the shrinking generation gap? Or the fact that we’ve long since waved goodbye to our youthful rebelliousness and simply acquiesced to the idea that maybe mother did know best after all? Or is it that we simply want to carve out our own path and retain our own sense of identity? It’s probably a little of a lot of things, and different for everyone I imagine. Whatever it is, it certainly seems familiar to all women, from all walks of life…

And that’s not the worst of it! My daughter’s teenage years have coincided with my thirties, so I’ve had to go through the whole ’should I still be shopping in Top Shop’ dilemma too! One participant summed it up really well though, by saying that we consider ourselves younger than our mothers did at the same age…and no doubt my daughter will think exactly the same thing too when she finds herself repeating my pet phrases, or giving her (yet to be had) kids yet another lecture on being responsible. Where things may change though, is that my daughter has been brought up in a world where her mum (and her friend’s mum’s) do shop at places like Top Shop or River Island or H&M, and where my daughter regularly drags me into Monsoon or Warehouse or House of Fraser…so are the lines between the generations getting a little more blurred - at least on the high street?