Do we really need to be empowered by advertising?

Good article. The media needs to be looked at a little closer, now more than ever.

-Dave

An advertiser's job is to sell a product. That's what they get paid to do. As long as they do so without lying about their product's benefits then I don't see a problem. The real problem is the people who believe some of these advertisements. If you're not happy with yourself now, no amount of special soap or special shoes is going to make you happy (A certain amount of special beer may make you happy, but only for a short while).

Question: Are you unaware of the chronic low self-esteem in women world-wide over unrealistic and false beauty "standards" personified in Hollywood and the MEDIA, which manefests itself through anorexia, plastic surgery, domestic violence and so forth? I mean, are you completely unaware of America's Next Top Model, Lara Flynn Boyle, the Olsen Twins, Cosmopolitan Magazine, The Real Desperate Housewives of Orange County, etc? Are you a complete cultural hermit? That's the only reason i can think of for an excuse for an article like this that claims ignorance.

The other day, sitting in the doctor's office, I saw a Dove ad with a woman with an interesting stomach. It looked like mine! And next to her, it said her name and "age 26". Well, I'm 24. I liked seeing a normal stomach in a magazine. If all you see in advertising is 100% smooth, airbrushed and flawless skin, YOU as a woman might not be phased, but idiots who are easily brainwashed (something like oh, 95% of the world considering the success of pop music) start to emulate what they see all around them and expect it to be true as well in average citizens.

Dove Real Beauty makes sense considering the other end of beauty ads. Unless you've never been to a Duane Read or picked up a copy of VOGUE you're basically covering your eyes and plugging your ears and saying "Hey, what's up with this, I'm bewildered, women don't need good role models in the beauty industry. They have PLENTY already."

Do women really suffer from chronic low self esteem because of fashion magazines? Dove's "proof" that this is the case was a survey that claimed that only 2% of women say themselves as beautiful. But considering that the definition of beauty is "unusually attractive," maybe the 98% who don't consider themselves beautiful are just being realistic about themselves. As for anorexia, it's a horrible disorder but a relatively rare one, and those who get it tend to be upper-middle class girls with demanding, perfectionist parents. Working class girls (who see just as many ads as wealtheir ones) tend not to develop this disorder.

In other words, the average woman over 18 may not need a "typical" looking woman gamely grinning and posing in blah looking white underwear to empower her.

Of course Dove's primary goal is to make money. Duh. But that certainly does not automatically mean that what they're doing is not a good thing. Quite the contrary, what they're doing is excellent, and badly needed.

When my mother was a teenager self esteem was not so completely tied up with ones dress size, but since her day that has changed dramatically. Only a fool could fail to recognize the massive role our public media has played in this damaging cultural shift. As you say, "advertising is [indeed] about selling more stuff," and sell more stuff it does, but that's not all it does. It clearly often has very real side effects. It changes cultural standards.

All human beings (even you empowered ones) need some sort of framework of standards around which we can then structure our lives. Like snowflakes, these frameworks are as individual as the people utilizing them. But here's the thing: when developing our own individual framework of standards we all (and again, this includes you empowered folks) use our society (including family) and our culture (in which the media owns a massive role) as the jumping off point.

A jumping off point is a powerful place. You don't think it influences where we land?

Why do we need Dove to run campaigns of this nature? Because Dove is a player in the media machine that adversely altered our culture in the first place. Why shouldn't it/couldn't it help reverse the damage?

Advertisers sell by either recognizing a need, or brainwashing you into believing there is a need. Again, I remind you that this brainwashing often has side effects. In previous decades advertisers (possibly inadvertently) brainwashed an entire culture, including themselves along the way, into believing size 4 was more worthy, more beautiful than size 12. They did that simply by putting the slimmest models next to their products (beer, cars, cigarettes, whatever), very clearly painting a picture in which the not-so-slim had no place.

Now the not-so-slim are demanding a place. Kudos to Dove for recognizing and advertising to a legitimate need, and kudos to all the women in this culture empowered enough to have stood up and gotten those needs heard by such a large and powerful company. Advertiser/advertisee symbiosis at it's best.

It is you, Thura, who seems to have missed the point.