Terry

Proposal In my argument essay I will be talking about the Dove Real Beauty campaign. The main idea of the dove campaign is put average women on the covers of their ads instead of the typical size 0 or size two model that ads usually employ to represent their ads. Dove uses women who vary between the sizes of 4 and 12. They put these women on billboards, print ads, and other visual marketing tools. Dove even started building self-esteem workshops for young girls so they can feel as though they are beautiful. Though these ads are suppose the real beauty of these women an airbrushing artist came out saying that he airbrushed these women so they could all look presentable to the audience. this is a huge controversy because dove was supposed to show these women flaws and all yet they decide to airbrush certain things they felt would not be fit for the ad so why would they call it an ad showcasing “real beauty” if they weren’t going to show these women with all of their flaws. Some articles say regardless of whether or not they airbrush the women or not it doesn’t matter because average women are still being represented. While others are like Dove is lying to consumers because they make it seem as though they are using these women in their “real” form when instead they are doing what magazines are doing to the models. So many say what the difference between the two is. Though many feel as though that it’s good for Dove to do this many also argue that this just another marketing tool to sell products. Dove is trying to appeal more to the mass of women, and we all know most women are not a size two. so they have decided to find regular women to sell their products thinking that women will identify with the pictures and maybe even see themselves in a few of them and buy their products. So dove real beauty campaign is not only to empower women about beauty and how they’re beautiful but also to use that to sell more of their products. Questions I will ask will be: how has the campaign for real beauty actually improved women’s esteem and if there has been an increase in revenue for dove since the airing of these ads. Also why did dove feel the need to airbrush these women if the campaign was supposed to be marketed on “real beauty”? Also how some feel about the airbrushing and what it means beauty really is? What made them choose to highlight real women to sell more products and has it worked. I plan to use research databases that both support and refute one another. I have already found two though they talk about two completely different things. When I develop my claim then I will be further able to choose which sources I fee would be good for my article.

what is your stance on this topic? you want to make sure you don't start regurgitating what your sources say. also, it's REALLY interesting that Dove airbrushed it's "real women" models...maybe it's symbolic of how "real women" are fake? i don't know, being the cynic that i am, that's what i would say...but you DEFINITELY don't have to. just an idea. so, if we go with the assumption that dove is doing all this to appeal to women so that they buy dove products, they're just being manipulative of "real women", and they don't really care about their self esteem? but no, the whole "self-esteem workshop" thing would refute that, wouldn't it? ~Houtaneh

It is very itneresting that Dove uses "real" women to sell their product because most companies will just use models and then even manipulate their images in order to make it more appealing and thus would yield a greater revenue. You could compare Dove's technique with that of other companies. Also your side on the issue is not very clear. You could ask if Dove's using of these "real women" helps them sell their product to the everyday women. ~Moeed