Brittney Johnson
Dr. Roger Stahl
December 2, 2011
Feminism and the Concept of Beauty in Modern Advertising
“Feed Your Face.” By Heather Brook
Initially, the author deals with the
question of why culturally different forms of female oppression are viewed as
such, when, in reality, they have the same end result: female objectification.
She raises the question of why genital mutilation in females is more
symbolically oppressive than something like labioplasty, and suggests that
although in a specific context one act is more severe than the other, both
ultimately are products of a patriarchal world using these vehicles to
objectify women and keep them “in their place.” From this discussion of
feminist issues around the world, she introduces the idea that most people see
feminism poorly due to a lack of good marketing for the ideology, rather than
ideologically negative attitudes towards women in our society. Most people, she
claims, don’t see the idea of ugly-feminism and controlling beauty practices as
being interconnected. Women and men alike view personal beauty practices and
the use of cosmetics as a personal choice, rather than standards deeply ingrained
in pop culture and the media.
She
uses this to introduce her overarching argument, that magazine articles promote
conflicting ideas: you could be beautiful and skinny if you denied bad foods,
and you are worthy of consuming all the rich chocolate you want. This
simultaneous offer and denial of ideas is represented in three different ways,
food as cosmetic, cosmetics as food, and women as food. Brook explains how
magazines often use food in their health or health/beauty sections in such a
way that they are described in terms of their actual health benefits, but
rather how eating them is good for your appearance. How eating X will make you
thinner or how the antioxidants in Y are good for your skin. Not only this, but
how using foods as facial masks or scrubs will improve your attractiveness. In
a similar, but opposite vain, she shows how throughout advertisements for body
wash, makeup, and other cosmetics, women are shown the value of products
without the debilitating or fattening qualities the real-food counterpart has,
in turn promoting the concept of consumption of beauty products. Why eat
fat-filled ice cream and gain unnecessary calories when you can use ice cream
flavored lip gloss? Don’t bother eating cherries, you can shower yourself,
literally, with them and “absorb” the qualities cherries symbolize: sexy and
luscious. In these statements, Brook explains how all consumption and use of
beauty products is connected to a desire to reinvent the concept of “self” by
buying into, quite literally, the constructs created by advertising companies.
All of this culminates in the final type of representation in advertisements:
women are not only consumers, but objects to be consumed. They use products for
their meaning and desire to be gazed upon, wanted, and desired, because of the
qualities they have garnered from their beauty products.
In the end, Brook’s goal is not to stop
women from using beauty products or shaving or being women. In fact, she argues
that those are the very things that create the ugly-feminism stereotype.
Instead, she hopes that women become aware of the reasons behind choosing or
not choosing to wear makeup, and other women’s choices to wear or not wear
religiously suggested clothing (hijab, etc.). She hopes that women in our society
will understand why feminism is what it is and why people have the attitudes
towards it they do and find some sort of balance between under-consumption and
over-consumption, that they not be tools of companies.
"Is Beauty A Joy Forever? Young
Women's Emotional Responses to Varying Types of Beautiful Advertising
Models." By J. Robyn Goodman, Jon D. Morris, and John C. Sutherland
This article is the write up of a study
done using surveys to discover what emotional response women have to different
“types” of beauty commonly represented in advertisements. The study, after
doing initial studies, discovered that there are not really six beauty types
like previous authors and theorists had hypothesized, but two: Sexual/Sensual
(SS) and Classic Beauty/Cute/Girl-Next-Door (CCG). The overall aim of the study
was the see the difference in emotional responses between High CCG/Low SS, High
SS/Low CCG, and Equal CCG/SS models. The theoretical framework for this study
is the idea that women compare themselves to models and judge their own worth
from those images, and this influences their feelings and emotional responses.
They used the social cognitive theory to back this up, saying that women’s
social behaviors are learned from the media. The authors note that emotions are
a more accurate indication of future behaviors. The study surveyed 258
undergraduate females using pictures from easily accessible magazines that came
out at the time of the study and a pictorial emotional scale for the questions.
The findings of the study yielded that
models with High CCG created greater pleasure, arousal, and feelings of
dominance in the women than models with High SS. They found that there were
negative emotional reactions to models with excessive amounts of sexuality in
their posing/aura. The authors note that this has multiple implications that
would need further research to find the root cause. They suggest, however, that
women use High SS as comparisons for self-evaluation because these types of
models create feelings of how a woman judges her value and ability. These types
of models having low arousal rates, they think, because women avoid images that
make them feel inadequate. The models of the High CCG type created feelings of
pleasure, dominance, and pleasure. The authors believe this is due to women
seeing women of this beauty type being treated better and not objectified like
beauty type High SS, so they aspire to be like them and, oftentimes, are
jealous of the High SS beauty type and find the High CCG type more attainable.
"Feminist Consumerism and Fat
Activists: A Comparative Study of Grassroots Activism and the Dove Real Beauty
Campaign." By Josée Johnston and Judith Taylor
The
basis of this article was to compare the marketing for Dove’s Real Beauty
Campaign and the grassroots movement of Pretty, Porky, and Pissed Off (PPPO), a
group of overweight feminist activists. However, here I will only focus on the
components that relate to the Dove case study as the other example does not
correspond to the subject of the project I am presenting. The authors draw on
the Dove’s website, multimedia advertisements, magazines and journals, as well
as participant observations at the Real Beauty events to evaluate how the
campaign challenged beauty ideologies. Throughout the article, the authors seek
to show the contradictions in the campaign, despite their use of
“unconventional” looking women and “grassroots” participation in fundraising
for organizations. They find that the Dove brand seeks to revitalize itself by
creating what they call feminist consumerism, a type of purchasing that
empowers women, and insures the brand aligns itself with the pseudo-feminist
ideals the public believes in.
Dove utilized print advertising in
conjunction with its online forums to create a conversation within the public
sphere about the ideals of beauty held by women. Dove used this feature to
explain that the problem with today’s beauty standards is unrealistic goals
invented by the media, and attempts to show these women how Dove products can
make them more beautiful. Through articles about loving hair, accepting
wrinkles, and embracing skin textures, Dove was able to advertise their
products for these problem areas. During these conversations, Dove asked women
to donate pictures of what they saw as beautiful and in response, donated money
to organizations dealing with self-image issues (and, in exchange, being
featured on their websites).
The articles authors recognize that the
Dove Real Beauty Campaign did begin to question and challenge traditional
beauty ideals, but points out their inability to state that beauty should not
be an ideal at all. The campaign’s success requires a fundamental belief in the
necessity of some form of beauty standard, and that all women should be able to
achieve it. However, the authors point out that beauty, by definition, is
exclusive. Finally, the authors note how the Dove campaign relies on their idea
of feminism and empowerment through consumer behavior. Rather than accepting
themselves as they are, Dove employs the strategies of their marketing and
advertising to convince shoppers to buy products that promote individual
empowerment and beauty, instead of promoting any sort of collective change and
progress.
"The Beauty Myth and Female
Consumers: The Controversial Role of Advertising." By Debra Lynn Stephens
and Ronald Paul Hill
This
article deals with the advertising industry’s impact on the dieting habits of
American women. The authors point out that although the ideal body image of
women has become thinner and thinner since the 1960’s, the average real body
weight of American women has increased dramatically during that time. These
contradictory facts have led to an explosion of the diet industry, including
weight loss programs, diet pills, and gyms. The article shows the obsessive
behaviors and feelings of women towards getting the “perfect” physique in their
statistics explaining that 75% of women of normal weight and 40% of underweight
women think weigh too much. Women who have these dissatisfactions with their
weight, they found, are incredibly more likely to develop eating disorders.
This is due, they believe, in advertising sending a message that fat people are
unhappy, lonely, and greedy, as opposed to thin people who live ideal lives.
The authors note that attractive models in
print and television ads are often more successful because consumers associate
them with more positive attributes: intelligence, friendliness, etc. They
explain that women are more likely to respond positively to a brand, product,
or actually purchase this product, if the endorser is attractive because they
have aspirational goals to be like that endorser and wish to develop the traits
they embody. Finally, they suggest that the FTC further project women and young
girls from this type of advertising that creates feelings of inadequacy and
negative self-image.
“Just a Slogan.” By Sue Thornham and
Pengpeng Feng
The concept of this article is to analyze
the feelings of young Chinese women in Guangzhou towards advertising in women’s
magazines and see how this advertising influences how they see themselves and
their attitudes towards their futures. Through the use of in-person interviews
with students ranging from twenty to twenty-four from the university, the
authors were able to gain a deep understanding of how real women react to
advertisements in China.
Throughout the interviews, the young women
continuously refer to the idea that the models are perfect and embody
everything the new Chinese woman hopes and dreams of being, but realizes she
cannot be. These girls believe that the types of lives models themselves live,
but also the ones they portray, are idealized fantasies of what women wish they
could be, but also serve as a motivation to work hard to attempt to be as good
as they can be and get as close to that model-ideal as possible. Not only this,
but the author and interviewer find that throughout Chinese history,
advertisements for women have become increasingly western, with models
appearing to have white features and characteristics. Throughout the
interviews, they find that young Chinese women see these as being incredibly
high standards for beauty. They believe that bigger eyes and pale skin with
light colored hair are far more attractive than what westerners consider to be
beautiful for an Asian woman. They discuss with the girls how women often get
plastic surgery to make their eyes wider to fit this standard, and how the
practice of doing so is becoming more and more common among young ladies.
In their conclusion, the authors explain
that feminism in China is a new and up-and-coming ideology because of the
political environment the women’s movement is developing inside of. However, it
is important to note that although many of the strides towards gender equality
have culminated in fashion magazines and multimedia advertising that corn-holes
women and has detrimental impacts on young women’s self-image, the fact that
there is some sort of movement towards equality is noteworthy. In the end,
though, the same consumerist values are presenting themselves and setting back
the women’s movement.
Works Cited
Brook, Heather. "Feed Your Face." Continuum: Journal Of Media & Cultural Studies 22.1 (2008): 141-157. Academic Search Complete. Web. 21 Nov. 2011
Goodman, J. Robyn, Jon D. Morris, and John C. Sutherland. "Is Beauty A Joy Forever? Young Women's Emotional Responses To Varying Types Of Beautiful Advertising Models." Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 85.1 (2008): 147-168. Academic Search Complete. Web. 23 Nov. 2011.
Johnston, Josée, and Judith Taylor. "Feminist Consumerism And Fat Activists: A Comparative Study Of Grassroots Activism And The Dove Real Beauty Campaign." Signs: Journal Of Women In Culture & Society 33.4 (2008): 941-966. Academic Search Complete. Web. 23 Nov. 2011.
Stephens, Debra Lynn, and Ronald Paul Hill. "The Beauty Myth And Female Consumers: The Controversial Role Of Advertising." Journal Of Consumer Affairs 28.1 (1994): 137-153. Academic Search Complete. Web. 23 Nov. 2011.
Thornham, Sue, and Pengpeng Feng. "“Just A Slogan”." Feminist Media Studies 10.2 (2010): 195-211. Academic Search Complete. Web. 23 Nov. 2011.