Now she knows her hair is beautiful. Because Dove told her so?
This is a deep researched advertising campaign known globally for its multitude of reactions. This is an emotive advertising campaign, based on women's insecurities about how they look and therefore about how they feel about themselves. But why the way you look has to have such a big impact of how you feel about yourself and how you determine your worth? Why not conforming to imposed social standards has to affect us that much, and when I mean us, I mean women. I haven't seen this advert markeded to men, like men don't have this type of issues about how they "should" look or act or feel. It is marketed to women, like women have to be defined as beautiful on whatever form that is. It is very look-focused and it makes women think that no other quality they might have it is so important as being beautiful. In my oppinion, Dove's campaign is a double-edged sword. On other hand, they want to make women accept and feel beautiful the way they are and open their eyes about the unrealistic standards of beauty imposed nowadays, but on the other hand, it attracts the attention on one big thing: physical beauty. Like if we don't feel that we look beautiful, we aren't being "real". Like being beautiful is a thing that every woman should be. I just can't really explain how I feel about this advert as I can't easily find the perfect words to describe it in English language. But I've did some research about what other experts have concluded regarding Dove's campaign and I found some pretty interesting things that captured my attention.
"This consumer brand knows how to hit our sore spots (excuse the pun). A classic beauty brand which started in 1957 as a bar of soap in the US, Dove is now an iconic family name. Dove’s Real Beauty campaign has consisted of a range of powerful videos and images, based on a research project, with the aim of making women feel good about themselves."
"What’s your initial reaction from watching this video? For most people it’s a positive one - whether you’re a female, male, young or old, it’s hard not to feel emotional watching these women realize that the Beauty Patch was just a placebo. It sends an empowering message that beauty and body confidence is all about state of mind: not magic patches, pills or potions. The women in the video echo this sentiment, describing the process as a "life-changing experience". (Telegraph)"
"However there has been (an equally emotional) negative reaction, with some people claiming that this ‘trick’ is insulting to women. Laura Stampler at Time magazine writes:
“It makes women seem too gullible, too desperate, and overall helpless against the all-knowing master manipulators at Unilever.” (Time)
Steve Miles, Unilever's senior VP-Dove, said in a statement that Dove created the "Patches" video "to intentionally provoke a debate about women's relationship with beauty" given that 80% of women feel anxious about how they look and only 4% consider themselves beautiful. (AdAge)"
"Whether you find this video heart-warming or demeaning, or see it simply as a see-through marketing stunt, there’s no denying it has hit off. In under a week the video has received almost 13 million views from Dove’s Youtube channel alone. Unilever’s social media tracking has found a 92% positive sentiment globally. (AdAge)
With the Real Beauty campaign, Dove have been tapping into current issues of self-confidence and body image ideals that are prevalent in today’s Western society. Yes, ultimately Dove is a brand that sells products, and no matter how many lumps in throats these advertisements cause, we all know it’s a selling tactic. But they are doing it brilliantly - their research has given them real insight into their market and they have created emotional advertising that has got us all talking." (Subscribe to Blog 2014)
"What message is the new Dove ad really sending to our daughters?
No advertising campaign aimed at men would ever feature doorways marked 'Handsome' and 'Average', says Judith Woods
In the new Dove advert, which this week went viral on social media, there are two large signs over the entrance doors at what look like airports in different countries.
One reads “Beautiful” the other reads “Average”. A camera records the reactions of real women as they draw near.
Some are confused, one backs away and retreats entirely, others stride forward. Most walk through the door marked “Average”.
But, interestingly, the women with teenagers chivvy, drag and physically push their diffident daughters through the “Beautiful” door.
It’s life-affirming, it’s instinctive, it’s the most natural, nurturing thing in the world. I would do the same. Of course I would."
"As mothers, we see what our girls don’t – not just beauty, but boundless potential. We want them to be a better version of us, to seize every opportunity and not be held back by those impalpable yet powerful forces that we, with the benefit of age and wisdom, have overcome.
It’s far from easy to convey to an awkward, coltish teenage girl that her feelings of embarrassment, her lack of self confidence, her fear of failing and reluctance to stand out from the crowd are all in the mind.
And the harsh reality is that even if we do manage to infuse them with high self-esteem and ambition, and convince them that women and men are equal, the chances are we will be selling them a lie.
The bitter truth is that even today, in 2015, high-ranking female managers remain a rarity. And far from creating a snowball effect that increases the numbers of women in business, the presence of one woman in a top-tier job halves the chances of a second woman landing a high ranking position at the same firm.
According to the US-based research published in the Strategic Management Journal, the “Queen Bee” theory commonly – pejoratively – used to explain why women don’t appear to promote other women is a myth.
Women who’ve climbed to the top don’t pull the ladder up behind them because they feel threatened by rivals. It is men who decide that having one woman in senior management is enough to satisfy the demands of diversity, resulting in a situation where women in the US make up nearly half the workforce, yet just 8.7 per cent of top managers are female.
Here in the UK, the figures are less dramatic, according to the Office of National Statistics, 32 per cent of managers are women. But these are invariably at a junior level: just 15.6 per cent of directorships on the FTSE 100 are women.
Yes, women do very often take time out to have children and, arguably, there’s a price to be paid for leaving the workforce for a while.
But it’s iniquitous and wholly disproportionate to consequently suffer a lifetime earnings gap of £423,000 compared to men on a similar career path.
There are, of course, high-profile women who have forged careers in previously male bastions of business, and all credit to them. But whenever there’s a business initiative being launched, it’s always the same faces who appear, the same names who are mentioned – Baroness Brady, Dame Marjorie Scardino of Pearson Group, former dotcom-er Baroness Lane-Fox of Soho.
Some years ago I interviewed Melinda Gates, philanthropist wife of Microsoft founder Bill, who dryly noted that any time any board in the US need a woman to make up numbers, they always want Hillary Clinton.
“Men only want exceptional, off-the-scale women, but they’re quite happy to hire men of indifferent ability,” she told me. “As soon as they stop asking for Hillary, we’ll be halfway to achieving real equality.”
In the meantime, it’s down to us as the mothers of daughters and sons – perhaps especially sons – to bring our children up with the will to effect change and the resilience to cast aside meaningless gender barriers and establish a genuine meritocracy.
But we must always remember that while men and women are indisputably equal, they are not the same.
For a start, no male-orientated advertising campaign would ever feature doorways marked “Handsome” and “Average”.
Assuming that any of the men even noticed the sign, they would stride through “Handsome” without giving it a second’s thought. Every last one. Even Jeremy Clarkson.
Would Hillary Clinton walk through the “Beautiful” door? I’d like to think so.
But my abiding hope is that, in the future, if my daughters ever see actual or metaphorical signs like these, they won’t panic or have a personal crisis. Instead, they’ll simply climb up, pull them down and nonchalantly trample them underfoot as they continue on their way."(Woods 2015)
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