Avoiding this is the one benefit of sleeping alone. That and nobody can see your tears of loneliness.
Yes! It’s not like the movies! (awwhahaha re: tears)
Dove: Campaign for False Beauty
Every now and then I get really annoyed with the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty and go on a tirade.
I just saw one of their ads at the theatre last night and it really pissed me off. Unfortunately, I can’t find a clip.
Basically, it showed a bunch of plain and unattractive women from different countries talking about what they wanted to do with their lives, how they wanted to make a difference and then it ended with these obnoxious close-ups of the women laughing and saying “I’m Beautiful.”
Dove thinks that they are telling girls to be happy in their own skin. That no matter what they look like on the outside, they are still beautiful.
Well, here’s my problem:
SOME PEOPLE AREN’T BEAUTIFUL
That’s why we have the word “beautiful” in the first place - to differentiate between that which is beautiful and that which isn’t.
If we start calling unattractive people beautiful - first of all, it doesn’t make them beautiful and we all know it. Secondly, we aren’t redefining the word - we’re just robbing the word of its meaning. If we start calling the flabby, granny-panty-wearing women of the Dove ads “beautiful” then we teach women that being healthy is relegated only to those evil models and actresses who make fat girls feel bad about themselves, simply by existing.
The Dove Campaign spends most of its time focusing on outer beauty! Isn’t this the opposite message they want to convey? But by defining “real beauty” as whatever you happen to look like on the outside and especially if you aren’t the definition of beautiful (because beautiful people aren’t real or don’t exist or are all photoshopped androids) they are ignoring what does make every person who strives for good in the world “beautiful” - what’s inside. But some people are mean and rude and self-centered and not at all beautiful on the inside either.
At least this latest ad has the women also saying what they want to do with their lives to better the world, although I could take umbrage with the fact that most (if not all, can’t remember) want to do something having to do with women. (So, if I want to be a dentist, I’m not a beautiful woman?)
You know what message I get from these Dove ads? That I’m not real. I’m a thin, beautiful woman who doesn’t want to go to Sarah Lawrence and become a women’s rights activist. I guess I’m part of the problem. My mere existence (which I didn’t choose, btw - blame the DNA, baby!) is a threat to every girl out there with low self-esteem. I say it slightly sarcastically but I know it to be true. This is why I have few friends - women who aren’t confident in their own skin don’t like being around me because I’m beautiful AND confident.
(Yes, I know. It’s very poor taste to say that you’re beautiful unless you’re not. Please forgive me.*)
It is a classic mistake for the Unattractive Fat Girls of the world - thinking that the Attractive Thin Girls don’t have any image issues and can be made to feel less of a person by indirectly calling them fake. Talk about giving someone a complex - “Ew, you’re so pretty and thin. You’re not real. See this muffin top spilling out over my size 18 skinny jeans and how I don’t comb my hair? That means I’m real and I’m beautiful and you’re just a sad, superficial sack of good genes.”
You know, I spent a year of my early teens drowning myself in my step-dad’s sweaters and wearing over-sized jeans because I was so embarrassed about being thin. People made fun of me mercilessly and they felt it was ok to do and that I shouldn’t get upset about. You can’t call a fat person ‘fat’ but you can tell a skinny person they should spray paint themselves white and go as a skeleton for Halloween (which is kind of funny but also a bit damaging when you’re 13 and trying to sort yourself out). And the insults were never jokes - they were said with a real jealousy and loathing. Especially being Black, thin is not in. It’s hard enough being light-skinned but add thin and green eyes and I basically had to walk the other way whenever I saw most of the Black girls at school.
I WANTED to gain weight. I would eat peanut butter and banana sandwiches at night and wake up 1 pound lighter! I used to think, “If only I could be 120lbs, everything would be fine.” I’m 5’4” and have been since I was about 14 and didn’t weigh more than 100lbs until I went to college. I was around 80 - 98lbs on average. But it was just high metabolism. Don’t worry - Fat Summer hit in 2002 and I didn’t really recover until like 6 months ago. But that’s another post.
Anyway, I got over it and learned to love myself or whatever they’re calling it these days. That was without the Dove Campaign to guide me into self-acceptance - imagine! (Personally, I find my worth in being a creation of the Guy who created the Universe. No big deal.)
What I’m getting to, the REAL problem is the use of the words “beautiful” and “beauty”.
Dove needs to stop trying to redefine beauty for us and help women to understand that - and this is what they’re really trying to say - every human being has value and worth and should be treated as such, no matter their physical appearance.
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
*If it helps, I made this chart last year for another blog to show what I generally look like throughout the day:
I love the rain, even if it makes walks terrifying and squishy.
I just love the fall.
This looks so good! And it’s funny!
This was inspired by Emily’s submission to ilovecharts. Mine is not nearly as elegant, so I’ll explain a little.
A poet tries to put something into words. Sometimes that something is beyond words - for me at least.
Poetry is up to interpretation though. What a poet writes and what the audience reads isn’t always the same. It doesn’t mean the reader is wrong. It also doesn’t mean that the reader is right - particularly when someone thinks way too hard about it.
Also, some poems don’t mean anything at all.
Seriously.
THANK you! Any writer or avid poetry fan knows it’s way more complicated than the distance between what the poet meant and what you think he/she meant. DaVinci said “Art is never finished, only abandoned” and the wonderful thing about art in the first place is that it has multiple and transient meanings.
