Olivia Fortier
March 14, 2014
C. Hellwig
English 102-038
Rhetorical Analysis Women Don’t Have to Be One Shape to Be Beautiful Dove’s Real Beauty advertising campaign is meant to promote a positive body image for young girls and women alike. The campaign was designed to combat problems women have been facing for decades, even centuries: self esteem issues and unrealistic views on body image. If you ask a woman her definition of beauty she will more than likely give you the description of a fashion model. The fashion models portray an unattainable, unrealistic, and often times unhealthy body image. Most women have a skewed image of what a healthy body physique looks like because of what they have seen in the pages of magazines, or billboards, or on television from an early age. Dove’s Real Beauty campaign features eleven women of all sizes, body types, and heights. They wear white lingerie, but of different styles to fit their body types. Dove used women of different races, hairstyles and hair colors. The Dove Real Beauty campaign provided a revolutionary view of beauty for young girls and women, and put on emphasis on self-esteem. The Dove Real Beauty campaign appealed to the average sized women, all over the globe, all races, from all walks of life, and from every age. From an early age women are led to believe that the 5’11” 115 pound model is the image of perfection and they should strive to look like the women in the magazines or the fashion models strutting down the runways. Women are brought up to think that the skinner they is the better they is, the more beautiful they is, the more loved they will be, the more successful they will be. That is all they sees when they flips through the pages of magazines, as they gazes at the commercials on her television screen or as they stare at the television and long to be the actress in the movies. We live in a dangerous culture in which girls start worrying about their weight and dieting at younger and younger ages. Dove’s Real Beauty Campaign was revolutionary in portraying a positive body image for all women. The Dove campaign helped women see themselves in a different light. The Dove campaign may not be completely straightforward, however it appears to be clear enough, to love your body just as you are. It could be argued the campaign is explicit because the women in the campaign are standing there in their undergarments and seem to be quite confident and the campaign has clear text that read, “Real Beauty”. However, I do not believe that Dove’s Real Beauty Campaign is plainly expressed. I believe that there are underlying meanings to the campaign, which lead me to believe that there are implicit messages in the Dove campaign. There is a hidden message behind the Real Beauty Campaign that I believe one might miss if not analyzed closely. At first glance it may seem as though the Dove campaign just wants you to feel empowered as a woman and comfortable in your own skin, at whatever weight, height, skin tone or hair color you may have. However when you examine the campaign more carefully and you dig a bit deeper, you realize the message is really, “if you want real beauty buy Dove.” Also, a closer examination of Dove’s campaign reveals that these women may actually be closer to the average size woman compared to the women we often see in magazines and on billboards. However the Dove women are really the “ideal” average size women. They have the perfect hourglass frame without a stitch of cellulite. If you look at them closely one might consider them to be plus-sized models. It doesn’t appear to be that Dove randomly chose these women from the street, rather it seems as though they were carefully chosen to portray Dove’s image of health. Dove’s Real Beauty campaign wasn’t intended to directly address men, but that doesn’t mean that men aren’t looking. This campaign while not directly selling sex, is still selling sex. Dove’s marketing committee may not have had men in mind in creating this campaign, but this campaign encourages men look at women as sex objects. Dove’s marketing committee dressed these women in white lingerie, which encourages men to look at them as sex objects. Even though men may not think that these women look anything like the Victoria’s Secret models, nonetheless most men are still looking at these women as sex objects because they are barely dressed. We live in a culture in which mass media has tremendous amount of influence over our thoughts, even without using few words. Images alone can speak volumes and influence us for a lifetime. Images can affect us in a positive way, as have seen in Dove’s Real Beauty Campaign, or images can negatively influence, as we have seen with the link between women’s body images issues and the unattainable, perfect Fashion model body type. Fashion models are the image of what men think they want, and will most likely never have, and the image of what women want to be but most likely never achieve. Women need to see themselves as more than just sex objects and start seeing their self worth. They need to realize the women in the magazines, and on our billboards have been photoshopped and enhanced. Men need start seeing women for their self worth, and stop seeing them as sex objects and stop setting such a high, unattainable bar for women to reach. Dove may have been trying to promote self-esteem, and a positive body image for young girls and women alike. I believe Dove achieved their goal of that in some aspects, however in the campaign, I believe that Dove was trying to further their products in a subconscious manner to the viewer. Dove ran with the idea of making women feel good about themselves by making other marketing companies such as Victoria’s Secret feel bad about making women feel bad about themselves. It was a brilliant idea on Dove’s marketing team.