In this particular piece of tawdry crap, they label two doorways into a building with "Beautiful" and "Average". They film women choosing a particular doorway and then interview them about why they chose it. The message (supposedly) is that 'beautiful' is simply a state of mind that women can choose...and therefore they should buy Dove products? It's a mind-blowingly annoying advert, for a number of reasons.
At the risk of mansplaining and missing the point, I can't help but feel that this is a toxic conception of beauty; not least because it's linked to selling beauty products to people who might at some level feel that doing so would improve their self-worth somehow. I mean, at the very least, I'd argue it's exploitative to co-opt a message of empowerment and self-respect in order to flog your skin moisturiser. I mean, look at this sponsored piece of feel-good crap:
Which is a lovely message (though misguided, as I'll argue later). It would be an even lovelier message if Dove weren't owned by Unilever, who also own Axe. You know, the company which makes adverts like this:
and perpetuates misogynistic attitudes like this:
I'd include more examples, but I'm starting to feel slightly disgusting.
Anyway, besides the ridiculousness of Dove's advertising, I feel that the idea of 'beauty' is something which is equally damaging. The fact is that no matter what culture we happen to be living in, there are certain ideals of beauty. 'Beauty' in these cultural terms is judged on outward physical appearance (so in Western societies, being skinny, tanned, long hair). It's something we should be wary when using because it's an exclusionary term. In defining what is seen as 'beautiful' we are also saying what is not. Too often, I feel that we use the phrase 'beautiful' when it's in fact being patronising or applied incorrectly.
The conception of beauty (of course) takes many different forms in many different places. For example, here in Thailand white skin is seen as a beauty ideal. Obviously, because of racial connotations it's something that makes Westerners feel uncomfortable, but that's beside the point. All over the country there are clinics that will whiten your skin for you, and there are of course many creams and products you can buy in stores that will lighten your skin tone. I would argue that this demonstrates the harmful concept of beauty; by saying that light coloured skin is beautiful (and promoting it as a cultural norm), you're implicitly stating that those with darker coloured skin are non-beautiful. How would this feel if you fell into the latter category?
Now, what some people attempt to do is to reclaim the word 'beauty' (as Dove are claiming to do in their advert), and point out that beauty is merely a word. If you choose to be beautiful then you are. Your height, weight, skin-tone, hair etc doesn't matter, so long as you feel beautiful and seize the label. Now that's all very well, but I feel that it's perpetuating a falsehood- beauty is subjective, yes. Absolutely. But it's a concept which is created by society, and attempting to subvert the label by claiming it will not change the wider social perception of beauty. In any case, we're chasing something that might never be reachable.
(see, by trying to promote curviness and reclaiming it as a beautiful/desirable trait, we're also skinny-shaming petite women)
In any case, beauty is not only a construct of society, but it's influenced by media and the 'beauty industry'. Every day, we see messages which reinforce a single (or at least, incredibly limited) conception of what is beautiful or what is not. And yet, when we resist these attempts to subvert our opinion, we still do it on their terms- by trying to claim the word 'beauty'.
Now I'm going to get all sincere/idealistic here, but what I would like to see is a world that doesn't try to change the mainstream conceptions of what is considered 'beautiful', but instead rejects it altogether. Screw 'beauty'! Screw trying to change your appearance into something that is not you. Screw trying to broaden a prescriptive and discriminatory term. Screw the 'beauty' industry, which profiteers from telling women that are somehow not good enough.
I have little constructive to say here, but since I'm on my soapbox anyway: forget being 'beautiful'- be something better. Be fierce. Be strong. Be vivacious, intriguing, amusing. Be something that cannot be commodified and sold by the bottle. Be as true an embodiment of yourself as you can.
Most importantly though, be somebody who doesn't buy Dove.
