real women have real vaginas
i hadn’t heard about the dove ad campaign nor come across it until yesterday. i went to amy’s site, who said that she started some shit on justin’s site because she got pissed off by what she read.
he was picking on fat women.
actually no, thats not fair. he said:
“Real beauty = Being a chunky fat woman?”
as expected, his audience, which consists mainly of horny boys drooling over nipple slips and teenage celebrities, went wild with it and slammed the campaign because they did not want fat women splashed all over the billboards and TV screens.
you know what? fair enough.
although i don’t think those women are fat at all, i really couldn’t be arsed about the opinions of justin and his band of horny boys.
however, i decided to write about it after loki left a link to it in the comments.
i kept going back to the website and reading their tagline:
“real women have real curves”
and i kept getting more pissed off.
because you know what?
some woman have curves. some women don’t. some women are fat while some are thin.
they are ALL real women.
i’m a size 4 - i don’t have the curves that a size 12 woman does.
am i less real? is it my turn to feel ashamed about my body? is that what we are going to do now? are we going to start a “fat is phat” or “fat is the new pink”campaign?
i am sure that there are a lot of skinny women out there feeling pissed off and offended because they don’t have curves and are, at least according to dove, not ‘real women’.
i think its a great idea to use women of different sizes in an ad campaign. it’s good to encourage acceptance of all sizes. it’s brilliant that they are talking about ‘real beauty’.
but it’s not okay to do it at the cost of alienating the skinny lot.
and don’t tell me that they won’t do that. all the comments on different sites, forums or blogs now have a “thank god we’re being shown real women, not those skinny coke head freaks” feel to them.
this guy said (in defense of the campaign):
They are average, normal American women….
These women tend to be the ones who write cute love notes on the waxed paper that wraps your PB&J, my friend. They are usually not coke-snorting freaks with a warped sense of reality–where fake tits, must-have “help” or nannies, and a carrot-only diet is the way to go. Model-like women are really the abnormal ones. Rarely do normal, bring-home-to-mom model-types exist. Trust us.
so skinny chick = freak or bitch or less loving?
thanks a lot!
and i love how the marketing department of dove is pretending they’re geniuses that have discovered something new, by saying:
“It is our belief that beauty comes in different shapes, sizes and ages,” said Philippe Harousseau, Dove’s marketing director on the “Campaign for Real Beauty.”
no shit, sherlock.
“Our mission is to make more women feel beautiful every day by broadening the definition of beauty.”
or coming up with one that celebrates curves, thereby excluding non-curvy women, which in any case does not happen to be the target market, since you ARE selling an intensive firming lotion to the curvaceous lot. oooh, did i forget to mention that priceless bit of information?
yep, real women have REAL curves but they still need to be firmer.
bottom line? weight does not define how ‘real’ you are and has nothing to do with your beauty. i applaud the effort but i HATE the tagline.
and the underwear.
i mean, who the fuck wears white cotton underpants?!
“fat is the new pink”, my stomach is in knots. And the abdominal fat rolls and laughter induced knots have chained together.
Rocky is correctly pointing out that this specific product is aimed at overweight women. Even more specifically overweight women who are overly concerned about the saggy inner thighs. As if firming up the thunder thighs will be so much better. The manufacturer is hoping the ads will cast some fat-woman-friendly aura over their entire line of soapy creamy crap and sell a lot of shit.
What is wrong, is people demanding to be called beautiful. As if not being beautiful is a bad thing. Not being beautiful does not make you ugly or repulsive. You can still be attractive, and comfortable and confident in your own skin, and have great personality and a friendly disposition, and be popoular without ever being beautiful.
Ladies, none of that stuff works. Even if it does, the man you are with wouldn’t notice. And most importantly, the man you want wouldn’t notice unless you spread ‘em before he knows your name.
Comment by ali — August 3, 2005 @ 8:31 pm
right on rocky! it’s almost every day that i get laughed at bcz of the lack of curves. Meanwhile the jaunta still goes on to make fun of anyone who is beefier and fleshier than myself. What is the ideal body frame like? U r perpetually tacked in either of the two extremes i.e. too fat or too skinny. Who has given the right to anyone to decide. I like my body as it is and wouldnt get caught up dead with a man who would only notice me when i am wearing a padded bra, tons of make up and contact leses…
Comment by medussa — August 4, 2005 @ 4:29 am
You have come across this, on my blog, and you commented on it, Rundee! Sheesh.
And I’ve seen your pic. You have curves–an ass to kill for. But I digress. You are correct. But the patriarchy has been trying to divide women since Hammurabi instituted veils for the nice girls. As long as we fight amongst ourselves, we’ll never get around to fighting the real demons: consumer society and the power matrix that is built to continue it.
Comment by Kristie — August 4, 2005 @ 4:33 am
great post title…..:)
Comment by vAgue — August 4, 2005 @ 6:58 am
The dead giveaway is in the visuals. All of these women may have curves but they also have fairly flat tummies. What about the reality of women who do need firming (!)lotion or whatever it is they’re peddling? Perhaps the admen have become nervosa about the anorexia they’ve been selling for so long.
Comment by uberhomme — August 4, 2005 @ 9:17 am
“the real demons: consumer society and the power matrix that is built to continue it”
That’s the crux of it, no surprises that Kristie isn’t fooled by it. Let us not forget, advertisers are interested in making money and they do this by selling a service to make other people more money. This means they widen the net of your product using whatever gimmickry they can. Remember the Benetton ads that caused such controversy before.
The way capitalism itself survives is by expanding to fill all spaces, if something is “underground” or untapped it will subsume it quickly in order to exploit it. The backlash against the previous prediliction for the “heroin chic” style has provided a marketing opportunity for approaching “real women”. In time there will be a backlash against this too.
There is no more obvious example of this than in the MacDonalds advert - using a black Manager (politically correct) to talk about the products and the healthy option with the tagline “we’re listening and we’re going to keep on changing.”
They are not working for your good, they are working for your money, never forget it.
Comment by Red Baron — August 4, 2005 @ 1:46 pm
kristie, did you write about it?? shit, sorry, it must have been a while back (and i probably didn’t follow the links you provided so never saw the whole ‘campaign for beauty’ bullshit website.
i absolutely love what ali said…that being beautiful doesn’t mean you’re ugly. i think that is the main problem. i was watching a talk show the other day and there was this average looking girl crying that she feels ugly, so oprah turned to her and said “look at you, i’m looking at you, you are beautiful” (and everyone started to cry and clap - the drama!) but it did not ring true - the next day, i am sure the girls insecurities returned.
we should be working on moving away from this desire to be ‘beautiful’ and obsessing about it…what oprah should have said is, “hey, look at you, you have nice hair, nice smile and eyes, you are a smart, healthy young woman - what the fuck are you crying about?!”.
Comment by rocky — August 6, 2005 @ 7:34 am
Let’s also not forget that attraction is a strange thing, how many times have we found someone quite alluring whilst our friends think we’re mad?
People have to work at what they have and the important thing is to be self-aware and have a little confidence, that is charismatic and makes the most of what you have.
Comment by Red Baron — August 7, 2005 @ 10:40 am
Having endured the many jokes by friends for what they deem my “questionable” taste in men (i.e. their looks), I think that the old “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder” line is distressingly accurate. God knows, I must have been doing SOMETHING right to land a couple of the hotties I’ve been fortunate to shtup in the past.
Comment by Sin — August 7, 2005 @ 8:28 pm
Don’t confuse beauty and attractiveness. Attraction is more than beauty. People have different types they are attracted to. And for some it might not even be a physical type. It could be the personality. Holy Einstein! it might even be brains.
Comment by ali — August 7, 2005 @ 9:55 pm
Hear, hear, Ali…I have been attracted to many a man…right until he opened his mouth and spoke. Then it was all over. Gimme geeky, any day.
Comment by Kristie — August 9, 2005 @ 2:32 am
I don’t think you can entirely seperate attraction and beauty. They are both subjective constructs corresponding to facets of a person that you find positive. Of course superficial beauty based only on looks is a little different but that as Kristie points out can be a rather different story. Book, cover and judge spring unsurprisingly to mind for people who go by this method alone.
Our perceptions of both beauty and attraction are latent, we cannot choose to find someone beautiful or be attracted to them altho’ it is an organic process which can change over time but it remains part of the subconcious as such.
Thus surely attraction is the manifestation of our feelings towards beauty?
Comment by Red Baron — August 9, 2005 @ 12:37 pm
hmmm…but often, you know that the person you are insanely attracted to is not considered good-looking nor is he the smartest, not even by your standards. sometimes you just can’t quite put your finger on why you are drawn to someone.
attraction is a real difficult one to figure out. i don’t think it is as simple as ‘the manifestation of our feelings towards beauty’ - i wish it was though!
Comment by rocky — August 9, 2005 @ 4:04 pm
i wear white cotton underpants…i mean, not all of them are white, but…or was that rhetorical?
Comment by ghost — August 9, 2005 @ 7:24 pm
Those thunder thighs and the granny panties scared me shitless the first time I saw one of the posters on a bus stand. If a thong is too small for you, you are too big.
Comment by ali — August 10, 2005 @ 2:01 am
hehehehe.. luv ure sign-off…o, wat DO women wear, if not white cotton underpants? *cheeky grin*
Comment by rahul — August 10, 2005 @ 6:12 am
rahul, they (should) wear nice, sexy, lacy thongs, panties, booty shorts, etc - check out www.agentprovocateur.com to get an idea!
and ghost, that remark wasn’t directed at the males! in fact, although i prefer boxers, i think men look nice in white cotton underpants (i’d be a bit taken aback if my man showed up in a lacy pink thong!).
Comment by rocky — August 10, 2005 @ 9:58 am
“you know that the person you are insanely attracted to is not considered good-looking nor is he the smartest”
But doesn’t that play to a formulaic and superficial notion of what actually constitutes beauty. If the attraction is there then there is clearly something that we find beautiful. Is it not the fear of disapproval from those around us that prevents us from being more candid about it?
Comment by Red Baron — August 14, 2005 @ 8:49 pm