Beauty Inside and Out Robert Tatum

Beauty Inside and Out

Today if you asked people what they think of themselves, almost everyone will start off with

something negative and begin to bring themselves down. No one ever says I have the best eyes or my

nose or cheeks are perfect and why is that? What makes people question how they look and why are

people not calling themselves beautiful? The answer is the media setting unrealistic standards toward

women all over the world to achieve the perfect body even when it is unachievable. Although most

people know that is unachievable, it is slowly picking away at not only their self-confidence, but also

their confidence to get through everyday life. It’s a vicious commercial strategy that has to stop and

Dove is doing a perfect job in helping bring notice to the subject…almost.

What Dove calls the “The Dove Campaign for Real Beauty” is the perfect thing in which I am

trying to express here. For years Dove has focused on getting the word out that you don’t need make-up

or any other beauty product to call yourself beautiful. You just need to believe that you are beautiful

and you are, it’s that simple. Now what this article brings to the table is staggering and honestly makes

me feel a little said inside knowing that this is the result to society’s standard on beauty. “4% of women

worldwide describe themselves as beautiful; and 81% of U.S. women strongly agree that "the media and

advertising set an unrealistic standard of beauty that most women can't ever achieve” (Anonymous 1).

If women know this then why is it they just let that be the standard and put them down? Well instead of

addressing the problem that way Dove takes a different approach and finds ways to make women

discover for themselves that they are beautiful.

In 2014 Dove posted a video of a man named Gil Zamora who was an FBI sketch artist and Dove

asked him to talk and draw to these women and never look at their face. This was the Sketch

Experiment. The women then described to the Gil what they themselves look like and he would draw

Beauty Inside and Out Robert Tatum

them. After all that was done and finished he made the women take a little break and talk to someone

while taking the break. The artist still not seeing anyone’s faces ask the person to describe the other

women that he/she talked to. That is when you start to see the differences between the two pictures.

The drawing that the women described themselves did not even look like them at all. They looked ugly

in the average person’s eyes. The drawing next to it was the drawing when the other person described

her and she looked beautiful and more the drawing looked more accurate. At the end of the video you

they put in 7 simple words “you are more beautiful than you think.” What a powerful way to express

inner and outer beauty by making you realize that you are beautiful and should have some confidence in

your stride. This brings it back to the media sentimentally telling women that they do not look beautiful

so without even a second thought they point out their flaws first and never say anything good

throughout that whole thing. Self-confidence is hard to get in the first place and we don’t need some big

company to tell us what we need to be confident or “beautiful.”

Dove doesn’t stop there; 2015, Dove takes two signs and put them over two separate doors

that go into the same place. The signs say “Average” and “Beautiful” and they keep them up for a while.

When the signs catch the people’s attention they stop in front of the two doors and are thinking about

whether they are beautiful or not. After long in thought most of the people walk through the average

door and never look back. After many times walking through the doors though some people started

walking through the beautiful door. Why? The answer is the people were tired of being average and

decided to make a change and go to the beautiful door. That is a sign of media that can change people’s

perspectives on how they see themselves and others. Women said when walking through the beautiful

door they felt accomplished and held their head high because they do feel beautiful no matter what

people say.

Beauty Inside and Out Robert Tatum

So not all advertisers are bad as you can see here, but overall the majority of them set standards

and use Photoshop to make unreal women or male models. This Photoshop needs to stop and it has

made an effect on some countries like Spain. Spain actually banned extremely skinny models and they

require a certain weight to perform on a beauty or model show. This shows that change can be made,

and at least people are trying things to get this beauty Meta out and accept people for what they look

like and who they are.

However, the reason that I focus on The Dove Campaign is because of the backlash that

happened and Jennifer L. Pozner can see the flaws in this campaign. Pozner expresses that the campaign

is well and does convey that women should like who they are not matter what they look like, but the

only problem is that when the commercials start to come out a new product from Dove also

conveniently comes out as well. Not only this, but in a way the Dove advertisement is a double edged

sword. “Yet even though Dove’s “Real Beauty” ads play to and subtly reinforce the stereotypes they

claim to be exposing, it’s impossible not to feel inspired by the sight of these attractive, healthy women

smiling playfully at us from their places of billboard honor, their voluptuous curves all the more luscious

alongside the bags-of-bones in competitors’ campaigns.” (Pozner 220) Was this really just an advertising

stunt all along? Going back to the quote “2% of women worldwide describe themselves as beautiful; and

81% of U.S. women strongly agree that "the media and advertising set an unrealistic standard of beauty

that most women can't ever achieve”, there was another statistic that Susan Chumsky pointed out

which is “…the research also found that 71 percent women are satisfied with their beauty.” This is

interesting and why would Dove leave that out? I am not saying it is a strategy to catch people’s

attention with the statistics, but it definitely seems that way. Not only has that but a man named

Richard Roeper made a statement that would just snowball this whole thing. He says ““I find these Dove

ads a little unsettling. If I want to see plump gals baring too much skin, I’ll go to Taste of Chicago,

OK….When we’re talking women in their underwear on billboards outside my living room windows, give

Beauty Inside and Out Robert Tatum

me the fantasy babes, please. If that makes me sound superficial, shallow and sexist—well yes, I’m a

man.” (Pozner 221) With this comment everyone had a field day and it was almost a running gag

insulting the women on the billboards and also throwing out phrases like “We shouldn’t encourage

people in being out of shape.” These are bold statements that the media can just consume and although

it is bad and not encourages the campaign at all Dove is still benefiting from it due to the media it is

getting. No matter what it is still getting attention so that explains the 24% increases of sales. We should

not point fingers on whose fault this is, but what we should come out of this is that there is still a

probably with the society finding these ads disturbing and we should just switch back to more “perfect”

looking models which is what the campaign itself was trying to go against but it ironically sparked they

exact opposite of what they were trying to portray. The fact that the men are so quick to judge the

women in the billboard is very shocking and heavily supporting that there is something very wrong with

today’s beauty standards and with the campaign still going on, only time can tell what will come out of

this.

Beauty Inside and Out Robert Tatum

References

1. BuzzFeedYellow (June 28, 2014). Retrieved June 26, 2014

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RT9FmDBrewA

2. Female Body- Westminster College (n.d.). Retrieved June 26, 2015

http://www.westminstercollege.edu/myriad/index.cfm?parent=...&detail=4475&content=4795

3. Jack (n.d.). Retrieved June 26, 2014

http://www.adsavvy.org/25-most-racist-advertisements-and-commercials/

4. Malgorzata Wolska (January 9, 2011). Retrieved June 26, 2014

Beauty Inside and Out Robert Tatum

http://krytyka.org/gender-stereotypes-in-mass-media-case-study-analysis-of-the-gender-

stereotyping-phenomenon-in-tv-commercials/

5. PTB (January 28, 2013). Retrieved June 26, 2015

https://11pb32.wordpress.com/2013/01/28/unrealistic-standards-set-for-men-in-the-media/

6. Dove’s “Real Beauty” Backlash (Fall 2005)

https://online.vitalsource.com/#/books/9781457605741/pages/229202150

Case Study: Dove's Brand Awareness Finds Beauty in Real Women

Anonymous. PR News63.33 (Aug 20, 2007).

http://search.proquest.com/docview/204215621/4A3F44F1E5F041D2PQ/6?accountid=38189

Beauty Inside and Out Robert Tatum