Comments on: branding the new impossible beauty ideal is nothing new

By: jenks

jenks — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 07:41:12 +0000

thanks, john

By: john drake

john drake — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 07:15:14 +0000

not sure about the misogynistic view of things, but just a quick shout out on the post itself… much has been written about this entire dove effort since 2005. despite the huge success, last week’s AdAge reported the dove brand has taken a hit/flattened since they recently started celebrating age with the annie leibovitz campaign. despite all the write-ups, this post is a new slant on things. nicely done.

By: jenks

jenks — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 00:03:53 +0000

i do not think that dove's "real beauty" campaign has anything to do with "exploiting the fact that it is socially acceptable to scorn women who don't comply with the unnatural beauty standards."

i think if anything, it is exploitative of some basic human psychology--about as much as a prozac commercial is.

i think it's really about people's own internal struggles, which are informed much more by biological predispositions than any noise about patriarchy.

By: Allison

Allison — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 22:11:44 +0000

The marketing itself is not misogynistic, merely exploitive of the misogynistic fact that it is socially acceptable to scorn women who don’t comply with unnatural beauty standards. I mean, men have never been targeted for things like douches and Brazilian waxes, even though their bits are probably funkier and hairier than women’s.

In a patriarchy, power rules. And since beauty has been a woman’s most likely route to power within that patriarchy, so is bodily self-hatred more likely among women, although not exclusively their domain.

By: jenks

jenks — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 21:14:59 +0000

it’s funny, it never ocured to me to consider it misogynistic. which is not to say it isn’t… just i’d never thought of it that way. is self-hatred necessarily misogynistic? that’s really what’s being targetted here. our self-hatred, not necessarily our gender.

the new thing to hate about yourself isn’t that you don’t live up to some crazy ideal, but that you aren’t ABOVE CARING that you don’t.

i honestly don’t even know how to tell which one is worse. altho one sure does feel more insidious.

i’m sure men are being marketed to as failures in completely different ways.

By: Allison

Allison — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 20:58:23 +0000

Interesting. Always fascinating to see how women are targeted in new and excitingly misogynistic ways.

On a semi-related note, I am curious about your critique on my org’s site on pink-ribbon cause-marketing for breast cancer: http://www.thinkbeforeyoupink.org/Pages/FocusOnPinkwashers.html

This is Breast Cancer Awareness month, aka pink ribbon mania month, which was ironically started by AstraZeneca the drug company and has a very convoluted investment in cancer: http://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/199909/cancer.asp