Modern Evolution

Because appearance and identity are major themes at The BAG, particularly as women and media are involved, I thought we should take a look at this ad.

First some background, though.

At the end of the summer, a story that dominated the news here in Spain was the backlash against underweight fashion models.  Prior to Madrid's fashion week, the Spanish Association of Fashion Designers, in concert with the local government, instituted a minimum weight standard based on a U.N. recommended body mass index.

Although there was applauding, fist pounding and back pedaling within the industry, the bigger shows that followed -- London, Paris and New York -- chose not to follow Spain's lead.

In light of the concern, I became interested in this ad, produced for the Dove company, as part of its Campaign for Real Beauty.  (BAG note: I became aware of the ad in late summer, but didn't get a chance to blog it till now.)  Given the sophistication of marketing and advertising (and perhaps, too, a growing evolution in social responsibility), it becomes ever more complicated to discern between self-interest and social-mindedness (if you accept the idea) in commercial campaigns.

I know you'll raise other questions, but here's mine:  As a hybrid commercial/public service announcement, how much is this ad "doing the right thing," and how much is it leveraging the "attraction" of social responsibility in the name of selling beauty and beauty products?  And then, in a practical world, is this what you call a "win-win?"

Given our close daily inspection of visuals here at The BAG, there is another extremely illuminating aspect of the ad to take note of.  The subject of photoshopping and digital alteration often comes up here in discussion, but I can't remember when/if we've had the opportunity to really see it process.  In that light, I found the post production sequence rather startling, if not somewhat illicit and even grotesque.

Finally, regarding the opening shot (above), isn't that look especially riveting -- as if, in that intense gaze and plain appearance, this women somehow convinces us she would not be a party to what follows?

I'd love to hear your reactions.

Video: Dove Evolution: From Model To Billboard In Under 60 Seconds - Link

Dove Corporation Campaign for Real Beauty - link

(Full disclosure: I increased the size, and added contrast to the still.)

(hat tip: BoingBoing. video: Reginald Pike. Yael Staav.Tim Piper/Ogilvy, Toronto via boardsmag.com)

Comments

[ummabdulla]

GeorgeF: "I simply don't understand, how skin&bones-creatures like the Olsen-twins, Calista Flockhart or Mrs Posh-Spicegirl could ever have become ideals."

George, your comment made me laugh, because after hearing all the hype about Posh Spice (Victoria Beckham), I was amazed the first time I actually saw a picture of her. I know everyone has different tastes, but she didn't seem attractive at all...

[moebius]

It’s not restricted to women and beauty. Check out this spoof ad about male obsession first. It might be worth a laugh. Then follow this link about female obsession, to put it in perspective.
I think that the great unifying theme of advertising is narcissism, keeping people tightly focused on their own selves and their own desires.

[Sebastian Dangerfield]

I'm afraid I, too, must be counted in with the cynical camp. The conglomerate that owns Dove is, of course, not particularly interested in helping uplift the self-esteem of women and girls, but in selling their products. At the same time, having decided by some elaborate calculus that appearing to be concerned about these issues -- because their research tells that that a whole lot of consumers are concerned about these issues -- the conglomerate might end up doing some good as a side effect. Maybe.
I am reminded of Bruce Robinson's excellent film 'How to Get Ahead in Advertising' starring Richard E. Grant. Grant is an adman who runs into a mental block when trying to sell a pimple cream and goes off his head. In the midst of his psychosis, he has a breakthrough: First, start a sophisticated ad campaign that glorifies the boil, the zit, the festering carbuncle. Only after successfully making acne hip and acceptable, does he then swing into the second phase, once again investing pimples -- now even more prevalent -- with stigma and social opprobrium, thereby selling more pimple cream than ever. Following is one of many brilliantly written scenes. Here, Grant is addressing a group of very green, newbie ad-men who are trying to come up with a way of selling a supermarket store brand that is supposed to be healthy. They've come up with an ad featuring a thin, pretty young (early twenties) woman.

Grant: Let me try and clarify
some of this for you.

Best Company Supermarketsare not interested in selling wholesome foods.

They are not worried about the nation's health.

What is concerning them is that the nation appears to be getting
worried about its health.

And that is what's worrying Best Co., because Best Co. Wants to go on selling them what it always has, i.e., white breads,
baked beans, canned foods and that fat-squirting little heart attack traditionally known as the British sausage.

So how can we help them with that? Clearly, we are looking for a label.

We need a label brimming with health.

And everything from a nosh pot to a white sliced will wear one with pride.

I'm aware of the difficulties of coming to terms with this.

It must be appreciated from the beginning that even the nosh pot must be low in something.

And if it isn't, it must be high in something else.

And that is its health-giving ingredient we will sell.

Which brings me to my final question: Who are we trying to sell this to?

Answer: We are trying to sell this to the archetypal average housewife, she who fills her basket.

What you have here is a 22-year-old pretty girl.

What you need is a taut slob, something on foot deodorizers in a brassiere.

Newbie Ad-man: I'm not quite sure we can go along with that. If you look at the market research...

Grant: I don't need to look at the market research. I've lived with 13-and-a-half million housewives for 15 years I know everything about them. She's 37 years old.

She has 2.3 children, 1.6 of which will be giris.

She uses 16 feet, 6 inches of toilet tissue a week and fucks no more than 4.2 times a month.

She has seven radiators and is worried about her weight, which is why we have her on a diet.

And because we have her on a diet, we also encourage her to reward herself with little treats, and she deserves them.

Because anyone existing on 1200 calories of artificial, synthetic, orange-flavored waffle a day deserves a little treat.

"We know it's naughty, but you do deserve it. Go on, darling, swallow a bun."

And she does.

And the instant she does, the guilt cuts in. So here we are again with our diet.

It's a vicious, but quite wonderful circle, and it adheres to only one rule:
"Whatever it is, sell it."

If you want to stay in advertising, by God you'd better learn that.

[Peter VE]

In the end, they treat the model as the disposable she is: no credit amongst all the manipulators.

[Tina]

"average women" are here presented like the handicapped children and death row inmates: as freaks we are made to feel sorry for in a subtle way.

Oprah's episode featuring a still atrociously thunder-thighed Kirstie Alley in a bikini (and a wrap she only briefly pulled aside, undermining the whole exercise) worked the same way. Did anybody really think she looked "gorgeous"? Would any overweight woman actually feel better after watching that segment? The most unflattering shot of Kirstie tottering along in her high heels was all over the news the next morning, inviting us to shake out heads at her figure. She talked about finding stripper's panythose to make her legs look a little better, a sign that she's still a long way from accepting her legs the way they are. It was a shame, the whole message really was "I must love myself even if my body is crap! Wahhhhhhh.." Come on, Kirstie. But of course, anybody who would be the star of a program called Fat Actress....

Somehow all these campaigns do the opposite of what they profess. I don't really see any movement towards promoting shapely or plump women as beautiful. The exception has maybe been Anna Nicole Smith, the beefy bombshell. She is genuinely fat and sexy, too bad she's also very stupid. Except for the dumb part, we really need more like her.

[momly]

Watch "Some Like it Hot" starring Marilyn Monroe, Jack Lemmon, and Tony Curtis. In one scene, Marilyn is looking decidedly pudgy. It could be because she was pregnant (or recently not pregnant) with Arthur Miller's child.

Whatever it is, she is NOT svelte and I remember watching it in grad school with some friends and we all noticed and commented on it. It was actually sort of refreshing that someone who would have been considered "fat" by our then contemporary standards was considered a sex symbol at the time the movie was made.

I felt better about the pizza I was eating, as I recall.

[GeorgeF]

Tina: Of course I wasn't talking about really overweight people (women as well as men). What I am worried about is propagandizing women like the Olsen twins and Mrs. Beckam. It is the same sick ideal like those body-builders, who make a joke of their feature.
I simply would like to remind to the ancient Greek ideal of human beauty, depicted in theit statues.

[Kija]

I use photoshop and was a) impressed with their technique and b) thought it was unnecessary as she was lovely in the first place. I do think the photoshop to change someone's appearance is illegitimate, but sometimes photoshopping someone's face actually makes them look more like themselves. For example, I took a photo of someone for an article and for some reason the light was incredibly harsh, exaggerating the fine lines and blemishes in her face to the degree that she looked wrong -- not like herself. I airbrushed out some of the blemishes and wrinkles, leaving some still in, but making her look more like herself than the photo made her look.

Another example, your photo has a group of white and black people and was taken with an auto-setting digital camera or your photo was taken under a tree with dark-light dappling from the sun through the trees. I would adjust levels on people individually to keep the white/sunlit folks from being washed out and the black/shadowed folks from being undifferentiated shadows and show what they look like in reality, not how the bad lighting or inadequate photography skills made them look.

[Lightkeeper]

Sebastian: that was hilarious. Thanks for posting it. I'm going to try to find that vid...

>> It is bit of an oversimplification to claim that all companies are in business to make a profit, therefore, all companies are evil and everything they do is evil. I appreciate the fact that I can buy inexpensive shampoo and soap at the store instead of making them myself or buying expensive handcrafted products. <<

Cassidy: I really don't think I oversimplified anything. The only point I was trying to make was that because making profit is the most important stipulation for a corporation, and the only one that really counts in the end, how can it possibly make sense that anything they do would trump that allegiance?

My friend once suggested, jokingly, that we should set up a Good Deeds corporation, whose only responsibility to shareholders would be to do good deeds. I thought about it for a second, then retorted that it would probably be against the law. Turns out, it really is. You cannot be a beacon unto industry unless you are making oodles of cash doing it. Now, from a business perspective you might argue this makes sense. But from an ethical one, it is grossly insufficient. If the only thing that makes you a beacon is finding more and more clever ways to cut costs, and subsidizing as much of that cost to the public as you possibly can (while privatizing all of the profit that you possibly can), then that just shows you how much importance we place on ethics in this day and age. Frankly, I don't see any light emanating from these lauded high priests of the (post)-modern age...

Perhaps I am being too simplistic. Perhaps it is possible for corporations to be ethically responsible. But when you are constantly looking over your shoulder to make sure this quarter's dividend is larger than the last one's, I don't think it is possible for even the most highly ethical ceo to care about being ethically or socially responsible.

I don't know why more people don't get this simple 2+2 logic. Many just throw up their hands and make accusations of oversimplification or what not. The fact is, good and evil simply does not factor into a corporation's thinking. It cannot. Period. I think some of us are just so desperately looking for a sign of something good, that anything at this point will suffice. But this Dove campaign is far too easy of an answer for all that ails our societies. And the easiest answers are almost always the wrong ones.

And btw, these "inexpensive" shampoos you have the luxury to buy would not be inexpensive if their real cost were tallied into the total you pay at the checkout.

jt, I think the whole documentary of The Corporation is online for free viewing at Google Video. Thanks.

[lower_case A]

What was wrong with her to begin with? Why do we need to be repaired in order to fit in; to be deemed worthy? And, worthy of what, exactly?

Is the problem consumerism? Is it unregulated, runaway capitalism? Is it civilization itself?

These are all questions I have been wrestling with for a while now, and this post adds a new and disturbing element. One thing is certain; we humans have lost our way.

[Tina]

Lower case A: you've got it. on the nose.

[Sebastian Dangerfield]

Lightkeeper: Amen on all your comments (and not just the one about my comment!). Using the rant from 'How to get Ahead ...' I was obliquely trying to make much the same points.
As for Cassidy's critique that "[i]t is bit of an oversimplification to claim that all companies are in business to make a profit, therefore, all companies are evil and everything they do is evil" I find it interesting that it is Cassidy -- and not you or any of the other thoughtful commenters here -- who has injected the concept of "evil" into the discussion. Our point thus far has been simply this: It is naive in the extreme to believe that the corporation that owns the Dove brand is motivated by a genuine desire to help correct distorted concepts of beauty and to alleviate the suffering that those distorted concepts have caused. The corporation -- as its legal duties to its shareholders require -- has as its prime and only motivation the accumulation of wealth. That is not a value judgment but an statement of fact, one that is emprically verifiable or falsifiable and that I believe is correct.
What we think about this as a matter of values is a different matter. You perceive (basically correctly) that those of us who are pointing this out have a negative attitude about the idea that wealth accumulation is and should be the sole and primary motivator of our most important instutions. But that is not only not the point we are making at present, it is also a gross caricature of the rich array of critiques of the social model that has profit-maximization as its over-riding value.
Speaking just for myself, I would never characterize the profit motive and all things that corporations do in furtherance of that motive as "evil" for the simple reason that I think the concept of "evil" is rather silly, theological one that does not advance the discussion one iota. I would argue, however, that from a standpoint that values human development, the exalted status that the profit motive enjoys in the current legal, political, and social order has distinctly pernicious effects. While this is hardly the place for a sustained exposition of such views, suffice it to say for present purposes that the schools of thought that embrace some version of this critique are many and varied and have a respectable intellectual pedigree; they do not rest on facile denunciations of corporations as "evil" and they cannot be blithely dismissed as such.

[Lightkeeper]

Sebastian, I think for me these concepts of good and evil do have overbearing theological connotations, but I know that good and evil does exist in this world. However, it is certainly not something as facile and grand as most people make it out to be. It is all us - the homo sapiens who are the only species with the gift of consciousness yet ones that still haven't really figured out what to do with it. (Ignore the pessimism...)

An extremely remarkable exposition on the nature of good and evil can be found in Hannah Arendt's arresting descriptions of witnessing the Nuremberg trials. I believe she reported for The New Yorker, and later these reports were turned into a book called "Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil." Very fascinating and extremely compelling.

[Saint Waldo]

I look at this and all I see is and update to Benneton's attempts to sell via percieved multiculturalism. The current campaign, for me, is best tag-lined, "The United Complexions Of Dove". Just because they acknowledge that certain things exist (photo retouches beyond the pale of reality) doesn't mean that their product has anything to do with it. Just like their product had nothing to do with the previous models associated with Dove, usually raven haired (for contrast), long fingered sprites with eerily luminescent ivory skin, often caught in mid-rinse splashing water on their face. The viewer's focus is still directed away from the product (what does Dove actually do, for me?) and focused instead on the producer (how does that company's behavior make me feel?). The implication of editorial choice is what they are attempting to leverage: that by admitting this goes on, they are somehow meta-absolved from past behavior and deserve your hard earned dollars. It's still useless dancing that is more about how the company is seen than the actual performance of their wares. I give it a 4 of 10 on the "They Really Mean It, And We Should Give A Shit" meter.

[eric wp]

The history of perfume goes back to Egypt, although it was prevalent in East Asia as well. Early perfumes were based on incense, not chemicals, so aromas were passed around through fumes. The Roman and Islamic cultures further refined the harvesting and manufacturing of perfumery processes to include other aromatic ingredients.

Thus, the ancient Islamic culture marked the history of modern perfumery with the introduction of spices and herbs. Fragrances and other exotic substances, such as Jasmine and Citruses, were adapted to be harvested in climates outside of their indigenous Asia.