Watchando: Is Offending Your Aesthetic Sensibilities
8 May 2008, 4:00 PM. By Daniel Mauser
- Those Dove ads featuring “real” chubby lesbians or whatever might have been retouched to leave out some offending realness. [The New Yorker]
- Paris Hilton believes neglecting her pets is good practice for the children she would eventually like to neglect. [The Sun]
- Ryan Seacrest might take over for Larry King. Or, put another way, Queen takes King. [MSNBC]
- Michael Lohan is on a mission to destroy Dina Lohan. Aren’t we all? [Page Six]
- Ellen Page will play Jane Eyre. We can’t wait to not watch. [Variety]
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_Ryan Seacrest might take over for Larry King. Or, put another way, Queen takes King._
FTW!!!
Blergg. Ellen Page. ::tosses head back:: Smart-ass feminist hero, yeah; good for her, blah. Got tired of her act after five minutes.
I think I love that they re-touched the “real women”. I mean, you expect that for the professional models…it’s just somehow so gratifying that the “imperfect” women, glorified for their imperfections-being-good-enough had to be touched up. The campaign was nice but bogus, where were all the fatties with stomachs?? Hmm? I want to see fatties. And old women. I want to see long gray hair. I do. Deal with it and get real.
@Maria Elena: They did feature older women and grey haired women for the Dove haircare and skincare print ads (only the ads for soap and lotion featured the “real” girls in underwear).
I seriously disliked this campaign, it was like a freak show. Those giant white underwears have irreparably damaged my psyche. Anyway, yes, none of those women had cellulite or stretchmarks or visible tummy bulge despite some of them being significantly overweight, which is very hard to believe. And the whole point of this is that you have to compare yourself to the women in the ads, which I always find curious and unnecessary. It still keeps the expected dynamic between the audience and the image in the ad: The image is something to measure yourself against, only this time it’s not that bad because the women are as out of shape as you are!! And I didn’t get the shampoo ads with the older women, You’d think reaching old age would have given you enough sense to not worry that your 65 year old hair does not look like a digitally enhanced weave on a 19 year old model. And don’t get me started on their “Pro-Age” ant- aging line, which included deodorant and shampoo. Who knew you had to buy products to fight underarm aging? Sigh…The parent company of Dove also owns the Axe body spray line of products, and those ads are certainly not pro-women. Ads are not there to build character or self-esteem, they’re there to sell stuff and make money, how do people not get this?
Whatever, hey no. 3, why don’t you back that up over here…