Read Envision In Design Pages 383-391
The essay listed above makes a clear case for Dove's campaign for real beauty, and cites numerous facts to detail the issues they tried to tackle. The campaign is a surprising one for a beauty-product company at first glance, but also begs the question of its success. Was it able to eliminate the fact that companies making beauty products, like Dove, were creating a host of issues with the way women looked at themselves through their pushing of an idealized version of beauty?
Part of the campaign relied upon other companies seeing the success it brought, making those companies want to bring about a change in how they showed beauty. The hope was that the change would be a more realistic one, in turn helping the problem of beauty seeming hopelessly out of reach to the average woman.
But, several years later, I don't think the goal the company sought out to accomplish has happened. Indeed, we still see beauty product ads pushing their idealized version of women in ads, whether the ads are for makeup or clothing. I personally can't say whether there's been a shift in these idealizations, but the versions presented nowadays still exhibit the traits the company was trying to get rid of. Namely, that female beauty is based on being ultra-thin, having perfect skin, and perfect hair.
Take this ad by L’Oreal, featuring Indian actress Sonam Kapoor.
Take this ad by L’Oreal, featuring Indian actress Sonam Kapoor.
Note her hair, skin, and thinness that we can gather.
Of course, the model in this poster is Indian, not Caucasian, which does show a shift towards being more open about race in these types of advertisements. But that alone is not all of what Dove set out for in its campaign. Women are still being bombarded with messages about the way they should look and act, in order to be beautiful.
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