Prompt 4

This week we will begin thinking about changing established definitions for the body. Our case study for this week is Dove's advertising campaign ("Real Beauty") which relies on your understanding that the bodies used in the campaign are outside of "normal" standards of beauty. But the campaign also deploys those bodies in such a way that it asks you to question those standards (is it our idea of beauty itself "distorted"). In this way, the campaign's rhetoric relies on a beauty norm in order to persuade you that it is the norm itself that is aberrant, not those "other" bodies; the accepted definition, the ads say, is not real. Or is it? Don't forget that Dove is trying to sell firming cream and hair conditioner with this campaign!

Looking at one of the print advertisements and one of the videos released by Dove, I want you to give me a brief analysis of how Dove is making its argument in those particular pieces. How does Dove both engage with and distance itself from an accepted beauty norm?

Finally, I want you to give your own opinion on the ethics or success of this campaign: does Dove really want to change the way we understand beauty? is the campaign ultimately radical (does it really change the definition of beauty) or conservative (does its maintenance of a beauty ideal, albeit changed, defeat any real change)?