Postrel Vs Dove Analysis

In our society today a business is not a business without an advertisement. These advertisements advertise what American’s want and desire in their lives. According to Jack Solomon in his essay, “Master’s of Desire: The Culture of American Advertising,” Jack Solomon claims: “Because ours is a highly diverse, pluralistic society, various advertisements may say different things depending on their intended audiences, but in every case they say something about America, about the status of our hopes, fears, desires, and beliefs”(Solomon). Advertisers continue to promote the American dream of what a women’s body should look like. They advertise their products in hopes for consumers to buy them, so they can look like the models pictures in the ads. Behind these ads, advertisers tend to picture flawless unrealistic woman with the help of Photoshop. In our society today to look like a model is an American dream and can be the reasons why we fantasizes and buy these products being advertised. “America’s consumer economy runs on desire, and advertising stokes the engines by transforming common objects;signs of all things that Americans covet most”(Solomon).

Jean Kilbourne’s 2010 documentary Killing Us Softly 4 discusses the idea that the businesses of advertising and commercialism have promoted specific body ideals for women in our modern day society by the methods in which they market towards their target audiences, specifically how women are portrayed in their ads. Throughout the documentary, Kilbourne is extremely critical of the advertising industry, accusing it of misconduct. She argues that objectification and superficial, unreal portrayal of women in these advertisements lower women’s self-esteem. Women have many industries that try to gear their products towards them with apparel, beauty, and toiletries being amongst the most prominent. The majority of advertisements put out by companies

The result was a commercial called “Choose Beautiful”. The commercial detailed how women in today’s society perceive their own beauty, which Dove used as a persuasion tool to to market their line of “beauty” products. For the commercial to be effective, Dove relies on women measuring their worth by their physical

In “The Fashion Industry: Free to be an Individual” by Hannah Berry, Hannah emphasizes how social media especially advertisements pressure females to use certain product to in order to be considered beautiful. She also acknowledges the current effort of advertisement today to more realistically depicts of women. In addition, these advertisements use the modern women look to advertise products to increase women self-esteem and to encourage women to be comfortable with one’s image.

In the early 2000’s, the Dove administration began searching for a way to revive a brand that was being dominated by competing companies. Struggling to keep the brand afloat, Dove had to think of a new take on advertising in order to gain the popularity of customers. The idea of beauty is often deceived through the media, especially with the types of advertisements used to promote products that are designed to enhance beauty. With a new, interesting idea, Dove was not only trying to gain back the buyers, but also was trying to change the conversation about beauty. This particular “Campaign for Real Beauty” by Dove advertisement, uses pathos and ethos to effectively persuade consumers that Dove supports “real beauty” which is located within

In her article “The Body Beautiful”, Rosalind Coward (1998) argues that society creates a negative obsessions of the “perfect” female body and it affects women negatively in their daily lives. She explains that women have to think of their bodies in separate parts and believe that each part has a different life of their own. Coward goes on to explain the way society expects women to be seen as by providing readers with example advertisements and how it pushes women toward having the body that is viewed acceptable. She concludes by stating that although society creates a negative obsession of the “perfect” body, it helps women from falling into despair because they keep a vague relation to the ideal image. By analyzing an advertisement for Elizabeth Arden’s anti aging serum, we see Rosalind Coward argues that advertisements for facial product often expect women to be flawless and perfect in their body figures.

The dove beauty campaigns are again a perfect example of this, as they depict a digitally altered photo of a woman being presented on a billboard (Tpiper). Depicting a remarkable transformation of an ordinary woman, this video shows a billboard model being produced through means of excessive makeup and hair styling in conjunction with digital editing after the photo was taken. This woman is not natural. She has pounds of makeup on her face, as well as photoshopped touchups, and yet she is perceived by the public as the standard of beauty. Nobody is able to compare with such a carefully sculpted face, and therefore this establishes unrealistic expectations

In week ten of our class discussions we were asked to watch a video titled “Killing us Softly” in which Kilbourne discusses how advertisements are programmed into our subconscious minds after being continuously displayed. The movie notes that only a small percentage of an advertisement message is taken in by your conscious mind, the rest will be reworked deep into your subconsciousness (Jhally, 2010). Sadly, a lot of these advertisements carry negative messages that impact the way women view their natural beauty thus lowering their self esteem and resorting to alternative means of getting the “ideal body”.

For women, advertising exemplifies the ideal female body. According to Kilbourne, young girls are taught from a very early age that they need to spend lots of time and money to achieve this “physical perfection.” But realistically this cannot be achieved. The ideal woman’s body is Caucasian, very skinny, big breasts, no flaws, and pretty much no pores. This cannot be achieved because it is physically impossible to look like this; the illusion comes from the secret world of Photoshop. No woman is beautiful enough so they leave it to technology to create perfection. The supermodel Cindy Crawford said, “I wish I looked like Cindy Crawford!” She knew the realities of Photoshop and body image, and more women and girls need to become aware of this as well.

In her documentary, Jean Kilbourne addresses how the images in advertisements have impacted women, men, girls, and boys. New Beauty: The Beauty Authority, is a

Everyday we expose ourselves to thousands of advertisements in a wide variety of environments where ever we go; yet, we fail to realize the influence of the implications being sold to us on these advertisements, particularly about women. Advertisements don’t just sell products; they sell this notion that women are less of humans and more of objects, particularly in the sexual sense. It is important to understand that the advertising worlds’ constant sexual objectification of women has led to a change in sexual pathology in our society, by creating a culture that strives to be the unobtainable image of beauty we see on the cover of magazines. Even more specifically it is important to study the multiple influences that advertisements have

This article discusses how media shapes standards of beauty. In modern society, beauty standards are seen as close to perfection which makes it impossible for women and young girls to meet them. This can result in mental and physical problems. The article includes the assessment of several brands. However, it is very descriptive as it focuses in on the Dove campaign. This article made me realize that Dove is taking the right steps to prevent women and young girls from getting physical and mental illnesses. Dove truly does focus on real and natural beauty. Also, the article reveals ethos as the author includes many facts and statistics throughout her article which makes it very difficult to be considered as biased. Pathos is also included as

Society has been obsessed with beauty ever since the beginning of time. Whether it be the royalty of the past or the models of the present, it is an ongoing analysis with society. As a society, we enjoy looking at people with so called “perfect” bodies and faces, so why wouldn’t advertisers take advantage of that? Although the question is, is it right to only expose us to the ideal image of a human or is it making our culture self-absorbed and self-conscious? Advertisers subliminally use certain tactics to make it seem that if specific beauty products are used, people will feel as if they become better looking or more masculine. Targeting specific audiences when persuading consumers effects society’s view of perfection. The Cosmopolitan advertisement for Polo Red Extreme Cologne is the perfect example of this. This ad uses its graphics to subliminally promises masculine ideals and social dominance through society’s viewpoint toward sex appeal.

Often times, women are pressured by the mainstream media to upkeep a stellar appearance. They are expected to measure up to high standards without question. Even before most girls reach puberty, commercials are bombarding them with small Barbie esque makeup kits filled with lip glosses and chalky eyeshadows. The impact it has on impressionable children, both girls and boys is something that will likely last a lifetime if unlearned. Cosmetic companies who are marketing to young ladies say they can simply improve their looks to gain acceptance from their peers if they use the products they are selling. The makeup industry is a multi million enterprise that makes a profit from women’s insecurities and amplified pressures from society as a common tactic many cosmetic campaigns use is to push women to embrace the ‘natural look’ by providing products that will make it appear as if the individual is not even wearing makeup. Companies will spout out that with these products, the end result will be ‘you, but better.’ It is somewhat of an underlying and slightly manipulating slogan, as if to say how a woman appears could be improved because it is lacking in the moment. This distorts how we all believe how a woman is suppose to look.

Dove gives the message ‘You are beautiful to way you are’ to all women to show that they are valuable. Also company tries to make women encouraged in order to believe what they say in their