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Student Name: Arup Das Student Id: 203615382
Course: EDUC3310: THE ADOLESCENT &THE TEACHER Instructor: ALYSON VAN BENIUM
Campaign for Real Beauty versus Fair & Lovely
Arup Das
The issue of the media influencing female and, particularly, adolescent-‐ female perception of beauty in unrealistic ways is a well-‐known modern phenomenon. In that regard, Dove Canada and its parent company, Unilever, are refreshing, daring, even original, in their statements about female beauty, which are presented on the company’s interactive and engaging website http://www.dove.ca/en/default.aspx#/cfrb/. Through the agency of media: text-‐articles, photo galleries, photo-‐ stories, quizzes and eye opening video, and Dove sends out a clarion call to all women: adolescents, mothers, mentors included, that it is beautiful to be a woman. Body size, complexion and ethnicity present no bar, nor is aging a dread disease; these are all parts of the variegated, multifaceted mystique of what it means to be Woman. The message is so compelling, its import so wholesome and its necessity so dire, that one can be forgiven for forgetting that this is how Unilever has chosen to position its brand in the highly competitive beauty and skin products market with the ultimate agenda of turning a profit.
The Dove website is admirably suited for educators to use as a resource with adolescent females in equipping them to decipher the traps in the current media messages and developing a sense of positive identity about being a young woman in today’s world. Not specifically designed with teachers in mind, and accessible at multiple levels of maturity, i.e., teenage girls, their mothers, mentors and resource persons who speak on body-‐image issues, it offers a wealth of slick, well-‐ constructed resources that can be used for students to research for their own sakes, as well as for specific class assignments related to decoding media messages in Media Studies strand in English, the grade 11 Media Studies course itself (EMS3O), the Social Science array of courses that include anthropology, psychology, sociology, family studies, and Business Studies which involve the role of advertising in developing body image, product-‐ positioning, and interpreting media messages.
A revealing, equity-‐related, multicultural exploration might include investigating the role of the advertising industry in how it targets different racial, ethnic, age, and gender groups, thus assisting students to “assess the impact of media and communication technology on the relationships among countries, cultures, and economies around the world (e.g., research the role of media and communication technologies in spreading the influence of North American popular culture around the world).” Quite ironically, Unilever manufactures and markets Fair & Lovely in India, a complexion-‐ lightening product for females of all ages, particularly adolescents, which perpetuates the unattainable colonial ideal of Eurocentric beauty in India! As students compare the glaringly contradictory emphases upon “fair and lovely” in India with the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty in Canada it would dawn upon them that, ultimately, Unilever is a commercial enterprise that will readily manipulate media and image messages in keeping with female perceptions in different cultures to serve their pecuniary interests. If it serves them well to appear supportive of wholesome femininity in Canada, they will do so; however, if it is better suited to their business interests to exploit female aspirations for fairness in India, they will do so. After all, it is a market composed of millions!