When “Real Beauty” is Really Hypocritical

Posted by in Uncategorized

Although I was pretty set on choosing the “Global Citizens” stream of the Coordinated Arts Program I remember having a really difficult time committing, as all the other topics seemed equally interesting and inspiring. The CAP conference, as I’m sure it was designed to do, was a great opportunity to see the intersections and divergences between the different streams. I went to see the Gender and Sexuality panel, and was particularly interested in Tara Rogic’s (of Media Studies) presentation “Warped Women: Representation of Females in Mass Media.” Drawing primarily on the work of Jean Kilbourne’s research and documentary series “Killing Us Softly,” Rogic argues that the dramatic sexualization of women in the media is extremely damaging for women across the world, as the idea that those who are “skinny and white” are the ideal standard of beauty perpetuates “racist and patriarchal” norms that aren’t representative of reality. Women’s bodies are being objectified and “fragmented and fetishized” by companies who commodify individual, dismembered body parts and sell them through the media. As most images are doctored through photoshop, these companies are selling ideals that are unattainable, teaching women that in order to “achieve” them, they need to buy their products. Rogic asserts that not only does this practice irrefutably harm female self-esteem, as society is indoctrinated to value their bodies over their minds, but also “opens doors for domestic and sexual assault.” Borrowing the analysis of Kilbourne, objectifying someone is the first step to dehumanizing them. 

This presentation reminded me of “The Representation Project,” a San Francisco based non profit behind the documentaries “Miss Representaion” and “The Mask You Live In,” which are concerned with the damaging portrayals, and lack of, women in the media, as well as how perpetuating harmful gender stereotypes promotes violence and depression among boys and men as they try to reconcile their identities with the narrow definition of masculinity in Western society. Through initiating social media campaigns such as “#askhermore” and “#notbuyingit,” The Representation project enlists the public to actively campaign against harmful perpetrators of media inequality and products that promote sexist images of women. They aim to promote “media literacy,” which as Rogic explains, is the ability to actively analyze and question the implications and consequences of media representations and messages in order to lessen and counteract the harm they do. 

In the question and answer portion of the panel, someone asked that beyond “media literacy,” what were other examples of ways that people could fight against harmful media representations. Rogic identified Dove’s campaigns, which are popularly championed for their encouragement of body acceptance and looking beyond physical aspect of beauty to identify “real beauty” and encourage self esteem in both young girls and women, as an example of ways in which companies can reestablish women as people beyond their bodies through the media. While it is true that these campaigns are beautifully done and generate a lot of attention and initiate discussion around these issues, I couldn’t help but draw on the knowledge that Dove, a subset of the parent company Unilever, was owned by the same people responsible for the blatantly sexist company Axe.

How could an organization ostensibly committed to promoting a more genuine and positive image for girls and women spearhead ad campaigns that blatantly and hypocritically go against the same messages? At the end of the day, Unilever’s main goal is to maximize the profits they make from their brands. For selling beauty products to women, this involves telling them that they should look beyond the mirror to discover their true beauty. For selling the same masculinized products to men, they sexualize women and present them as “prizes” received as a result of consuming their product.

This is produced

by the same company

as this?

AND THIS?

I’m #notbuyingit.*

*Except for the fact that I literally am…my deodorant is from Dove.

One of the most important things I’ve learned this year, particularly from ASTU, is to not take anything (especially if it’s being sold to us) at face value. Corporate, organizational, and governmental agendas often aren’t transparent or easily identified, and as consumers in Western society we are constantly targeted for the marketing of ideals, products, and norms that often perpetuate hegemonic power structures that serve to marginalize some for the benefit of the dominant.