If you've never seen this, it's pretty cool.
How many young women, or girls really, do you guess look at that image (which probably appeared in magazines as well as on the billboard) and want to look like that? What must happen to their self-esteem when they see images like this and realize that they can never look that way?
The insidious thing is that most of this happens before they have the rational thinking capabilities to understand what has been done to them. Young girls start very early to want to look like the images they are drawn to. I've seen three year old little girls swear they want to look like The Little Mermaid, and feel bad that they can't.
How much of this stuff scars their fragile psyches?
More and more, the same thing is happening to young boys. These kids are feeling the pressure to be muscular, thin, and have ripped abs. Most of the teen boys and young men using steroids (and the numbers aren't, yet, as bad as the media suggests) are doing so for cosmetic reasons, not for sports.
Men are getting pec implants and glute implants (women are doing this too) the way women are getting breast jobs and nose jobs. Guys are paying thousands of dollars to have the fat sucked out of their abs, called ab etching.
This is all very insane to me.
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2 comments:
Dove, of course, is a soap brand, manufactured by the corporate giant Unilever. If you are not aware, Dove also did some advertising about a year and a half ago using "real women" in their instead of supermodels on their "Campaign for Real Beauty" billboards in major U.S. cities (see here: http://www.campaignforrealbeauty.com/flat3.asp?id=2287). This video is created by the Dove Self-Esteem Fund, an adjunct to Dove's Campaign for Real Beauty. If we ignore for a moment the fact that the billboards referenced above were intended to promote Dove's new line of cellulite-reducing products, and to earn corporate dollars for a major soap conglomerate (which are huge, but separate, issues), consider for a moment the comments made by various individuals when reacting to those ads (see here, at Ms. Magazine's blog: http://www.msmusings.net/archives/2005/07/ive_mentioned_t.html) Pay particular attentention to the rections of Roeper and Guerrero, and you will see more of what's wrong with the popular conception of beauty in America today.
-Jen
Thanks Jen. Now everyone knows I have a radical feminazi as a friend. :)
No, really, I appreciate the links. And I did know about that other ad campaign -- Oprah made it world famous. And of course, while it's possible to thank Dove for their more sensitive campaign, it is nonetheless a campaign to sell product, bottom line. But I have to support anything that can help young women question the ideals of beauty that are shoved down their throat.
Now if only Brute of Old Spice (or someone) would do the same for men.
Peace,
Bill
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