THE DOVE CAMPAIGN FOR REAL BEAUTY:WATCH THESE ADS

November 24, 2007

Children in the line of fire

Dove has produced some powerful advertising campaigns in recent years, aimed at redefining the meaning of beauty in our culture. Most of you have seen these ads already, but I’ll put the clips here to watch.

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The first one, I found terrifying. I could only watch it once :

The second ad was deeply touching. I felt guilty for ever buying in to the trash that affected womens’ self-perception so negatively, and now affects our daughters. It is unforgivable that we permit an industry to teach these amazing girls to feel degraded or ashamed, and yet we all support it to some degree. Click on this link to watch the ad.

Thank God for unanswered prayers

I was an anorexic teenager so I understand on a very personal level how marketing propaganda is absorbed by a young mind. I can still slide back into the place that my head was in during those two years, and I resist the beauty industry’s lures every day of my life.

Until this last year, I would have had plastic surgery if the cost and medical risk hadn’t prevented it. Today, I resist the notion just as strongly. I see it as a tragedy, a disfigurement. I feel such relief that I couldn’t afford it when I might have thought about doing it.

Plastic surgery to improve health or to remove a social stigma is another issue entirely (IMHO). When you have very large breasts that are painful, or a scar, where people react to you differently because of it, plastic surgery finds its element, allowing you to not always have to cope with that burden.

The sisters are doing it… and some corporations care

Dove deserves huge commendation for the marketing limb they went out on with these campaigns. How many forces in this world seek freely and forcefully to strengthen women, rather than diminish and weaken us? I think it’s so important to support businesses that make this goal a public part of their mission, like Dove, like Paula’s Choice.

Our love-hate relationship with the cosmetics industry

As with many bad things in life, we allow it to happen to us. We even attract it. Women want to function in a world where we can care about health and appearance, without the pressure to satisfy a standard imposed by an irresponsible industry with regard for nothing but money.

The cosmetics business lies to us, and in our desperate desire to believe their promises, most of which have only ever been empty, we pour out our money and our hopes.

Reject every thing that weakens our daughters and our sons

Women make a unique contribution that no other being on this planet can offer. It grows with the years to become a mantle of love, perception, and sensitivity that could shield the entire world. Every girl should come to know this great personal fulfillment in a body that has not been maimed to please another being.

A girl is most vulnerable at a time when her natural power is not fully developed and she is preyed upon by a self-serving industry that promotes itself with no internal censor for the harm it inflicts.

Your daughter might not appear to listen to you, but she is internalizing your every word and action. Your son is doing the same. If you allow your daughters to be exposed to standard advertising (how can we realistically prevent it?), let alone more adult themes, then understand your own position on the topic clearly so that you can discuss it with her and empower her to resist.

But she’s still 15; her need to be accepted and to feel her independence will cloud her deeply seated knowledge of where self-esteem really comes from. Children have an innate understanding of human worth, but it becomes too diluted by marketers who know how to sell the appeal of clothing that belongs on a teenage prostitute. Let your daughter be a woman of strength, in a healthier world where none of her power or energy is wasted on demeaning herself.

Make sure she exercises. Make sure she sees you exercise. Movement hits a reset switch in the brain when the mind is going places it should not go. It’s the safest way to fix her head and give her some ammunition to fight back with, while the moral fiber of her character still under construction.

Any worthwhile man could care less

There is an irony in that men do not care if we do this to ourselves or not. Any man that does care has done you a favor, because he just sent up a banner that floats over his head telling you to leave him behind. He is not worthy of a moment of your time or a day of your life. He is a loser. Lose him.

What about makeup?

Is the use of makeup fair? Or does it also represent giving in to an artificial concept of what women are supposed to look like?

I love makeup. I love the colors and the effect it can have. It’s like watercolor painting on a face. Maybe I’m kidding myself and I’m using makeup as a mask for the theater of my life. Is it naïve to think that the metaphor of makeup could be used to make women feel better about themselves?

The argument could be continued to the extreme of abandoning all forms of grooming, hair cuts and color. Each woman will answer this question for herself. I am a moderate person and usually feel best on a middle road. Severe and inflexible rules are too idealistic, and in the end serve nobody, because they are abandoned and forgotten. Is it not better to learn to make discerning decisions, but see that makeup at least leaves the body and mind intact.

Dove Dear Body

Dove has created a website where women can read or write about age and beauty. Some of the letters are beautiful and uplifting.

In the follow-up article, my letter to Dove.

E-mail this article to every mother you know (click the Share This link below) and encourage them to become aware, to write a letter. The more women speak, the more the world changes.

Write a letter of your own. What will your daughter hear from you? You’ve just seen what she’s hearing from everyone else. Among these voices, only yours cares for her. You’d better say something.

Posted by Christine Scaman | Filed Under Happiness, Makeup, Paula's Choice