Blog #2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hibyAJOSW8U&feature=related

The above video is from the Dove "Real Beauty" campaign, funded by the Dove self-esteem fund. The goal of this campaign was to prove to consumers how unreasonable female image and beauty expectations are in modern society. The video begins with a very average looking woman coming into a salon for a makeover. Next, beauty experts do her hair and makeup and make her look much more attractive according to today's beauty standards. Next, they snap a photograph of her all "done up" and then edit this snapshot on photoshop. It is in this editing stage that the viewer sees just how absurdly distorted today's magazine images are.
This video engages with the idea of the gendered gaze in various ways. (PowerPoint, 06/29/10) First, they use the makeup and hair techniques to make the woman look much more soft and feminine, and to cover up all of her blemishes and other imperfections. Next, to make her absolutely perfect and to "fix" all of her other "unideal" characteristics that cannot be hidden or changed with makeup, they use photoshop. They increase the size of her lips to make them look more luscious, they elongate her neck to make her look longer, thinner, and daintier, they smooth out her skin to make it look softer, they trim the edges of her neck and shoulders to again make her appear thinner, they soften her square jaw to make it look more rounded and feminine, and lastly they increase the size of her eyes to make her look "doe-eyed", vulnerable and inviting.
All of these edits that were made both reinforce and intensify the imbalance of power between genders and the belief that women are inferior and that they exist so that men have the satisfaction of being able to gaze at them. (PowerPoint, 6/29/10) The video explicitly engages with the ideas surrounding body size by taking an already thin and healthy looking woman, and using computer editing software to make her face appear even thinner than it already is. This plays into Bordo's argument that advertisements are never 'just bodies' and that they exist to make a statement about the values of our culture: in this instance, femininity, thinness, and beauty. (PowerPoint, 6/29/10) (Bordo)
Dove's purpose of creating this video and this campaign was to show viewers that our expectations of beauty today are highly distorted and unrealistic because the magazine advertisements that we refer to as a guideline for what is beautiful are distorted themselves. The video plays into the ideas surrounding the internalized gaze, and questions and challenges the unfair beauty expectations that women put on themselves. (PowerPoint, 6/30/10) The video also explicitly challenges consumerism as a way of achieving hegemonic beauty ideals by promoting natural beauty as the ultimate ideal. Buying and using the "proper beauty products" to make yourself look more beautiful and feminine is portrayed in the video as not only unnecessary but possibly even ultimately damaging to the self-esteem of women in our society. Using this video, Dove is disputing the unrealistic beauty standards of women in today's society as well as objecting to the relationship that has formed between femininity and consumption. (PowerPoint, 6/30/10).

Bordo, Susan. Twilight Zones: The Hidden Life of Cultural Images from Plato to
O.J. N.p.: University of California Press, 1997. Print.
Brown, Adriane. "The Body and the Gendered Gaze." University Hall, Ohio State
University. 29 June 2010. Lecture.
Brown, Adriane. "What Not to Wear and the Internalized Gaze." University Hall, Ohio State University. 30 June 2010. Lecture.