One of the awards given out at the National Organization for Women’s 40th anniversary birthday bash (at which Allison and I danced to folk music popular before AK was ever born) was for Dove’s advertising campaign featuring ‘ordinary’ looking women. You know, we’re all beautiful and if you don’t agree, we’ll stamp on you with our big, ugly hobnail boots.
I’m afraid that Virginia Posturel’s take on female pulchritude and the Dove campaign is probably more realistic:
“Cosmetics makers have always sold ‘hope in a jar’ — creams and potions that promise youth, beauty, sex appeal, and even love for the women who use them. Over the last few years, the marketers at Dove have added some new-and-improved enticements. They’re now promising self-esteem and cultural transformation. Dove’s “Campaign for Real Beauty,” declares a press release, is ‘a global effort that is intended to serve as a starting point for societal change and act as a catalyst for widening the definition and discussion of beauty.’ Along with its thigh-firming creams, self-tanners, and hair conditioners, Dove is peddling the crowd-pleasing notions that beauty is a media creation, that recognizing plural forms of beauty is the same as declaring every woman beautiful, and that self-esteem means ignoring imperfections…
“Dove won widespread acclaim in June 2005 when it rolled out its thigh-firming cream with billboards of attractive but variously sized ‘real women’ frolicking in their underwear. It advertised its hair-care products by showing hundreds of women in identical platinum-blonde wigs — described as “the kind of hair found in magazines” — tossing off those artificial manes and celebrating their real (perfectly styled, colored, and conditioned) hair. It ran print ads that featured atypical models, including a plump brunette and a ninety-five-year-old, and invited readers to choose between pejorative and complimentary adjectives: ‘Wrinkled or wonderful?’ ‘Oversized or outstanding?’ The public and press got the point, and Dove got attention. Oprah covered the story, and so did the Today show. Dove’s campaign, wrote Advertising Age, “undermines the basic proposition of decades of beauty-care advertising by telling women — and young girls — they’re beautiful just the way they are.”…
“Every girl certainly wants to, which explains the popularity of Dove’s campaign. There’s only one problem: Beauty exists, and it’s unevenly distributed. Our eyes and brains pretty consistently like some human forms better than others. Shown photos of strangers, even babies look longer at the faces adults rank the best-looking. Whether you prefer Nicole Kidman to Angelina Jolie, Jennifer Lopez to Halle Berry, or Queen Latifah to Kate Moss may be a matter of taste, but rare is the beholder who would declare Holly Hunter or Whoopi Goldberg — neither of whom is homely — more beautiful than any of these women.”