Year 12 homework -
Write an essay of 2 A4 pages answering the following question:
How does Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty try to challenge today’s stereotypical representation of beauty in the media?
Is it successful?
Compare with another advert.
Use your notes from the lesson, visit the Dove website and find yourself a stereotypical beauty advert to compare Dove with.
Here are a few reminders of what we looked at and considered:
Shanel Lu: I love the thought of being a part of an ad that would potentially touch many young girls to tell them that it is all right to be unique and everyone is beautiful in their own skin.
Julie Arko: Being a woman is beautiful. Waking up every morning and living a happy, healthy life is beautiful.
Lindsey Stokes: Young girls need to see real women like themselves in print ads or on TV.
Sigrid Sutter: Truth is beauty.
Gina Crisanti: It [the campaign] encourages the viewer to let go of society's narrow fantastical idea of beauty, and embrace beautiful reality.
Staci Nadeau: It's time that all women felt beautiful in their own skin.
Julie Arko: Being a woman is beautiful. Waking up every morning and living a happy, healthy life is beautiful.
Lindsey Stokes: Young girls need to see real women like themselves in print ads or on TV.
Sigrid Sutter: Truth is beauty.
Gina Crisanti: It [the campaign] encourages the viewer to let go of society's narrow fantastical idea of beauty, and embrace beautiful reality.
Staci Nadeau: It's time that all women felt beautiful in their own skin.
- Only two percentof women describe themselves as beautiful.
•Sixty-three percent strongly agree that society expects women to enhance their physical attractiveness. Forty-five percent of women feel women who are more beautiful have greater opportunities in life.
•More than two-thirds (68%) of women strongly agree that "the media and advertising set an unrealistic standard of beauty that most woman can't ever achieve."
•The majority (76%) wish female beauty was portrayed in the media as being made up of more than just physical attractiveness.
•Seventy-five percentwent on to say that they wish the media did a better job of portraying women of diverse physical attractiveness, including age, shape and size.
•Why do you think there is so much focus in our society on body image?
•Where does our notion of an "ideal" body come from?
•Why do we think we should look a certain way?
•How does the ideal image of a woman's body differ in other cultures? In other historic times? How does this compare to the ideal image of a man's body?
•Who controls what images we see?
•Do you think teenage girls are especially vulnerable to these ideas? Do teenage boys feel similar pressures?
A plan:
- Discuss what the current representation of women is in the beauty industry. Is this fair? Has this changed at all?
- Talk about the Dove campaign. What are Dove like as a company? What are their values? How do they present these values through their 'real beauty' campaign? What criticism have they faced?
- Analyse print Dove ads
- Analyse moving image Dove ads
- Analyse Dove website
- Compare this with your chosen advert
- Summarise by discussing the beauty industry and the values behind it. Was this campaign ground breaking? Did it change the way women are represented or do we still have a long way to go?
Homework is due on Friday 27th September.
