Dove's "Campaign for Real Beauty"

They are certainly doing it for their own marketing needs but it could be influential.

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Originally posted by audra trower williams:
[b]If it's marketing disguised as good politics, but it actually has an impact, what do you think about that, too?[/b]

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Whether a product/service/philosophy is good or bad, people/corporations will cash in on it.

If Dove manages to sell its products while promoting self-esteem, that's better for women and girls than them doing it by promoting negative self-images, but the motive is really profit. I don't see them as deserving either praise or condemnation for it.

Actually, the stuff's pretty good. I've switched from K-pak conditioner to Dove. It's 3/4 as good at 1/5 the price. That makes good financial sense.

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I like it, too!

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I thought that Irish Spring had copyrighted that line. [img]smile.gif" border="0[/img]

My freckles have faded away, not on my arms but on my face. When I was young, they embarrassed me so much. Now, I miss them.

Be careful what you wish for. [img]frown.gif" border="0[/img]

P'Tachk! Hinterland. Don't go there, or I shall have to cut out of you!

Well, folks, I admit I'm a bit of a sucker for female beauty, including the super-hyped pro models who get paid just to look better than anyone who has to live and work in the real world.

But I also have great appreciation for the more natural beauty and the working class attractive women "real look." I find my wife as dashing now as the day I met her.

While I suppose this new campaign by Dove has some merit in promoting largely un-enhanced beauty, I have a much bigger beef with the fashion and personal hygiene industries.

I find it a real piss-off that kids are being targeted by sleazy ad campaigns to get them (or to get their parents) to spend all kinds of money on pricy fashions that clearly are intended for more mature people.

It bugs me to see 10 and 12-year-old girls, who have barely hit puberty, trying to dress and look like Britney Spears, who is 23. In additional to the monetary rip-off, I think it sends very powerful, and often confusing, sexual messaging to kids who are not mature enough to handle it. This is one way that leads to a lot of unwanted pregnancy and the greater reliance of abortion, like discussed on another thread here.

This absolute sleaze as its worst, and I think it's almost as bad a tobacco firms targeting young kids in their ad campaigns to encourage them to start smoking.

I'm not sure what can be done about this. I don't like heavy-handed state censorship, since that always ends up hurting the average working class person. And when a trend usually starts among large groups of people, including kids, it's almost impossible to discourage.

Any ideas on this?

I'm sceptical of all this - of course it's good that they're giving money to worthwhile charities and promoting alternatives to the cookie cutter version of beauty, but you can't ignore that they're only doing it to make a buck. For example, before I left the UK in June big Dove ads were gracing all of the city buses. They were photos of 'real' women with curves in their underwear with some catchy, feel good slogan - and then you saw they were advertising one of those firming skin moisturizer things.

There is a lot of proof that the world has passed its peak oil production. As we all know our (Canada and US) economies are based on mass consumption. Everything plastic is made by oil, oil is needed to drive it to stores etc. As these shipping et al. costs go up so will the prices of everything as the store owners pass on the prices to the consumers.

So if the price of oil goes up astronomically, its presumed that our economies will nose dive into a recession, some are saying one that will rival if not be 3 times worse than the 1930's depression.

I am wondering what the effect will be in a more social context. Will our society regress so that our young women will buy more durable clothes instead of the spandex and rayon (synthetic fibers) clothes we see now?

So many of us apparently are looking to find fulfillment in a mall, by competing with the jones' but if all this reverses I am wondering what the face of our new world will look like.

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Basic Principles of Rayon Fiber Production — In the production of rayon, purified cellulose is chemically converted into a soluble compound. A solution of this compound is passed through the spinneret to form soft filaments that are then converted or “regenerated” into almost pure cellulose.

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Although rayon was a man-made fiber, it was not a pure synthetic since its basic component, cellulose, was naturally fibrous.

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Looks like we are both right.

That's a good idea. People should write to them and ask.

There's something cynical going on, no doubt, and it might even be as bad as "give them the disease then sell them the cure"

but there's a Dove billboard on the Gardiner near the skydome, and that plus-size model is very cute.

I'm in a bad way though. I dig skinny gals strung-out on heroin A-N-D healthy ladies too.
16-60. [not really]

[url=http://dir.salon.com/story/mwt/feature/2005/08/18/nike_ads/index.html?pn... saw this for the first time today,[/url] even though the campaign was a couple of years ago.

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It was just a few weeks ago that the Dove "Campaign for Real Beauty" ads featuring recognizably curvy women got plastered on the walls of major metropolitan bus and subway stations. Only days ago, the unexpected media storm about the campaign reached a late crescendo with an Op-Ed in the New York Times. And now, seemingly out of nowhere, come the Nike Big Butts and Thunder Thighs, protruding from the pages of fashion magazines as part of the company's "Just Do It" campaign for fall.

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They have links to the advertisements, which are neat, especially the "big butt" and "thunder thighs" ones.

I didn't know that! Figures, though.

[img]http://www.ananova.com/images/web/89805.jpg[/img]I liked those Dove ads because I enjoy looking at healthy robust women showing their bodies.
That 'big butt' picture was kinda sexy, too.
Pardon me for indulging my heterosexual obsessions in this forum, I just can't help myself.

Some men also have issues with defining "real' beauty.

[img]http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f192/jesteronomy/thumbnail.jpg[/img]

Look at photos of celebrities when they first come on the scene compared to later in their careers.They go from healthy to haggard. Dove is just as guilty as the rest of the potion manufacturers for prodding insecurities.

[url=http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20523460/]Here[/url] is another example of manufacturers perverting public perceptions and health risks for their profit.

The subject is breast feeding but I think it also is germaine to the issue of what women will do to furthur the "campaign for real beauty" due to manipulative profit seekers.

Wow. I like that.

[url=http://thesituationist.wordpress.com/2007/10/21/hey-dove-talk-to-your-pa... response to the Dove campaign.[/url]

that maybe has to do with who heads that section ( I'm not justifying anything)- but with reagrds to the first article objections, I think that given what's out there, something is better than nothing. Apart from the dove campaign, Unilever is much like other cosmetics companies that they criticise !

No kidding, huh? Welcome, btw!

[url=http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/brandnewday/archives/2008/05/surp...! Dove's "Campaign for Real Beauty" ads actually kind of fake[/url]

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Remember the first ads for Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty, when it flaunted its defiance of the beauty and fashion industries with images of love-handled and cellulite-prone “real” women? Turns out those photos, according to the May 12, 2008 issue of The New Yorker, were as digitally manipulated as any skinny model-festooned fashion spread. It’s mentioned in a Lauren Collins profile of the toucher-upper himself, Pascal Dangin, who works regularly for Vogue, Dior, Balenciaga, and many others. Hear what Dangin has to say about the Dove project on page 100:

"Do you know how much retouching was on that?" He asked. "But it was great to do, a challenge, to keep everyone’s skin and faces showing the mileage but not looking unattractive."

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Ah, this whole Dove/Unilever and 'real beauty' campaign rather burns my ass. Giving with one hand and taking with the other doesn't always add up to something socially or morally valuable. I appreciate the links some of the participants have posted. Greenpeace has also put together a video with respect to Unilever:
Talk to Dove | Greenpeace International
[url=http://www.greenpeace.org/inte...]http://www.greenpeace.org/inte...[/url] (I hope I've linked that properly, as I am not great at this stuff).

I have a friend who won a Dove "make under" contest -- she came in "first" out of thousands of applicants across Canada. It was a big pampering trip to Toronto, lots of products, a professional photo-shoot, etc. They enhanced (grossly exaggerated) the amount of 'before' makeup so that they could then should her 'real' beauty with the make under. On a day to day basis, she wears no make up and sent in pictures of herself in which she wore no make up as part of the contest application. She was on the cover of some pharmacy flyers, etc -- 'before' and 'after'. It made us all laugh, her included. Is there any corporate marketing scheme that can be taken at face value? I don't think so.