As I started my research on popular culture jamming, I thought a good way to start was by simply googling "popular culture jamming." As you can imagine I found plenty of material like adbusters and Culture Jam: The Film, all of which are great and have been posted already. But what caught my attention the most was when I google imaged "popular culture jamming" and found a picture from the Dove Self Esteem Campaign in which an elderly women is sitting in the nude and the slogan "too old to be in an anti-aging ad" appeared.
Immediately I asked myself if a major corporation like Dove was doing their own culture jamming with advertisements like these. Further images included women and men in their underpants of all racial backgrounds, body shapes and sizes, and hair types.
Upon first glance, the Dove Self Esteem Campaign seems like a great organization that "encourages girls to embrace their unique beauty." They do this through workshops that are supposed to build young girl's and women's "body confidence."
Ok, yes, this is great, I agree. For a major corporation like Dove who, unlike their competitors, are selling the idea that your purchase of Dove will contribute to these workshops which in turn will promote better self esteem of body images for young girls and women is a great idea.
HOWEVER, (and this is a big however), upon further research into the Dove campaign and navigating their website I found a BIG flaw in what Dove is promoting. On the Dove homepage, the very first thing that appeared in big bold letters was "Transform Your Hair From Frizzy to Fabulous!" Hmm, well. Apparently if you have frizzy hair (I do myself) you are not fabulous and in order to be fabulous, you must not have frizzy hair and use their Dove products to transform your frizzy self into someone who is fabulous.
WOW! How problematic is this? EXTREMELY!
How can a company promote one to "embrace their unique beauty" but at the same time try to sell a product that will erase such beauty.
To me, this ties in to the media theory of the capitalist critique we learned about in class. This theory suggests that mainstream media are industries there to make money and they do so through selling insecurities. I think the Dove industry is a perfect example of this. Dove is selling their products through the idea that no matter what characteristics you have, you are beautiful in your own way, but are you really according to their standards? When they say unique beauty are they just sugar coating the fact that they are trying to say that you are not beautiful according to cultural and soicietal norms?
Yes you have frizzy hair and it's beautiful BUT if you want to be fabulous you have to rid yourself of this plague! Yeah Right!
If anyone has any thoughts or comments on this, please feel free to do so :)
Seraph of the Rose
Sources:
http://www.dove.ca/en/
http://www.google.ca/imgres?q=dove+self+esteem+campaign+old+lady&um=1&hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&tbm=isch&tbnid=qMbH1xpBkg_mXM:&imgrefurl=http://bitchmagazine.org/post/rock-of-dove&docid=eDUkfZgn1aAQzM&w=359&h=276&ei=7A1-TuSGBMTz0gGUxvQG&zoom=1&biw=1440&bih=779
I found what you had to say about the Dove ad campaigns really informative and started thinking back to some of the products and advertisements dove puts out that still promote the dominant cultural norm. Such as the advertisement for their moisturizing creams showing women moisturizing their legs in order to gain the attraction of a man, 'not only will our cream make your legs less dry but we can get you a better chance of a heterosexual relationship! yay!'
ReplyDeleteOne video I found shows many women; all white and probably no older than 40 maybe even 35, all relatively thin and dressing in the same way perhaps a middle class women would, hiding their skin with their clothing because they don't have dove body lotion to make their skin acceptable to show inn short sleeves! The commercial shows that the women cannot love their self inside unless their skin is Dove-moisturizer-ready and therefore beautiful on the outside! This is ridiculous because it bases the fact that we must have Dove-smooth skin in order to have confidence, as opposed to the real reason to moisturize skin; have less itchy dry skin in order to be physically comfortable throughout our daily routines.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFQq0dhw4Ps&NR=1
Another moisturizing commercial by Dove shows another fairly young white woman in a bright white room with comfortable (and most likely expensive furniture) naked touching her smooth skin that now feels like silk. So instead of having verbal reason with a clothed woman telling how Dove helps her dry skin she is using her attractive body (by societal standard)to sell the product.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbBzlW_c3eI
These commercials conflict with the Dove Self-esteem beauty ads that they also air to the public. So I completely agree with you, Seraph of the Rose, that while Dove promotes unique beauty to capture audiences who are sick and tired of being left out of a cultural beauty standard, they also give into conforming to the cultural beauty norm to continue the standard within society that beauty comes in only one shape, size, colour, age, skin-smoothness, hair texture, etc.
oh and i forgot to post my name
ReplyDelete-Dougie
Hi Seraph of the Rose,
ReplyDeleteI actually did a study on the "Dove campaign for real beauty" last year, and I have to completely agree with you on how problematic the approach is that Dove takes with its advertisements. Just as Dougie also pointed out the biggest flaw within this "campaign" is that the models do not deviate that far from social norms! They are still in fact considered to be "pretty" women, who have a flaw or two (if having freckles or grey hair is considered a flaw...). A lot of people speculate that the social aim of Dove is not genuine in any sense, but is only an attempt to make use of feminist themes to sell more beauty products. I feel as though I have to agree to an extent, what do you think?
I believe that if they really wanted to challenge stereotypes of beauty, then they would use even more diverse models - perhaps ones that are not considered "beautiful" by conventional standards. Although the idea of empowering women to be comfortable in their own skin is a brilliant start for advertising, for me the Dove campaign for beauty remains as a pseudo-attempt if you will, at portraying what real beauty is.
Cheers
The Veiled Interpreter
In addition to my last post I recently found the paper I wrote on the Dove campaign for real beauty, and wanted to post a quote I had cited within it. The quote is from a male who responded to the launching of the Dove campaign outside of North America. This quote still makes me gasp a little bit!
ReplyDelete"Who wants "real" women after you [women] have habituated us from infancy to improved, upgraded, dressed up, made-up and packaged versions? So don't make us replace you now. Don't get real on us all of a sudden. It's too late. Like the disks and the software in our computer - we prefer you counterfeit."
(Although this may deviate a little off the topic of Culture Jams I couldn't help it! Brutal isn't it?)
The Veiled Interpreter
Hi Seraph of the Rose,
ReplyDeleteAn interesting tidbit about Dove is that they are under the same company umbrella that produces and markets AXE mens shower products. If anyone is familiar with Axe and its advertising is that they usually are very sexist and portray women in an unfavourable light. Not only that they only portray women who are young, thin and extremely beautiful.
This is quite disappointing as it makes you believe less in Dove and what they are trying to do with they Real Beauty campaign. Makes it seem far less beautiful......
Bakerella
I am very familiar with this campaign, as I have seen it advertised all over as well. I too have heard before that it was a pathetic attempt at portraying real beauty. I would say this ‘real beauty’ campaign was a mass media trick. It was tricking women into believing the company truly thought every woman was beautiful. Obviously it was just another sales tactic. Sadly, this campaign probably brought in tons of money for them.
ReplyDeleteI want to say that other, well thought through, culture jams are trying to give us the education necessary to realize and notice when ads like this are sending us bad messages. We have to train our eyes to catch the bad stuff! The fight for feminist social equality includes becoming educated. Without normalizing the fact that women should be represented respectfully in the media, we won’t ever see improvement. The Dove campaign for real beauty can look like a respectful ad to the untrained eye. But when an ‘educated’ person from the feminist field breaks it down, we can see all the awful messages buried deep within! The message isn’t telling us women are all beautiful, the company is really saying ‘we sell beauty products buy them to look good like our freckled models’. I really liked the comment about “freckles and grey hair” still not making the model represent real beauty. It’s very true those women still look like the typical model used in the media. Once we critique the media we can suggest ways to improve. In order for improvement to be made by the media, we need to catch their attention with culture jams to show them how unreasonable they are being.
Should we really be so harsh on the Dove campaign? I mean, is a small improvement better than nothing? I’ll have to admit it is. Do you think these Dove advertisements are better than the axe ads? Maybe we should praise the company for trying? Who knows maybe their next ad will be even closer to portraying a not so commercialized women!
-Goldilocks
A good find, and a deft connection to culture jamming - it's not impossible that advertising execs working for Dove aren't aware of culture jamming as a political tool - one to make their ads look 'shockingly disruptive of the advertising norm'. It was a breath of fresh air to read people critiquing the campaign and making the connection between Dove and Unilever, the transnational Pharma that owns it.
ReplyDeleteCorporations are there to make money. Period. This campaign is a fantastic way to sell women 'empowerment' while also perpetuating their insecurities - one of my favorites is the ad which ends with "Talk you your daughter; before the beauty industry does", but the audience has just sat through a dizzying array of images of female beauty 'tricks' and ... DOVE IS THE BEAUTY INDUSTRY!!! So...IT'S ALREADY TALKED TO YOUR DAUGHTER!!!
However, Goldilocks also raises a good point. The Dove campaign is an excellent example of what was raised in class this week - that cultural texts (like the Dove ads) are spaces of ideological tension that can be both repressive and a step in the right direction.
The Doctor