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THE CRITICS 125 MARCH 2007 THE ATLANTIC CULTURE AND COMMERCE It is the same in the eye of every beholder. The Truth About Beauty BY VIRGINIA POSTREL C osmetics makers have always sold "hope in a jar"—creams and potions that promise youth, beauty, sex appeal, and even love for the women who use them. Over the last few years, the mar- keters at Dove have added some new- and-improved enticements. They're now promising self-esteem and cultural transformation. Dove's "Campaign for Real Beauty," declares a press release, is "a global effort that is intended to serve as a starting point for societal change and act as a catalyst for widening the delinition and discussion of beauty." Along with its thigh-firming creams, self- tanners, and hair conditioners. Dove is peddling the crowd-pleasing notions that beauty is a media creation, that rec- ognizing plural forms of beauty is the same as declaring every woman heauti- ful, and that self-esteem means ignoring imperfections. Dove won widespread acclaim in June 2005 when it rolled out its thigh- firming cream with billboards of attrac- tive but variously sized "real women" frolicking in their underwear. It adver- tised its hair-care products by showing hundreds of women in identical plat- inum-blonde wigs—described as "the kind ofhair found in magazines"-tossing ofr those artificial manes and celebrat- ing their real (perfectly styled, colored, and conditioned) hair. It ran print ads that featured atypical models, includ- ing a plump brunette and a ninety-five- year-old, and invited readers to choose between pejorative and complimentar\' adjectives: "Wrinkled or wonderful?" "Oversized or outstanding?" The public and press got tht* point, and Dove got attention. Oprah covered the story, and so did the Today show. Dove's campaign, wvoie AdvertisingAge, "undermines the basic proposition of decades of beauty- care advertising by telling women—and young girls—they're beautiful just the way they are." Last fall. Dove extended its image building with a successftil bit of viral marketing: a seventy-five-second onfine video called Evolution. Created by Ogilvy & Mather, the video is a close-up of a seemingly ordinary woman, shot in harsh lighting that calls attention to her uneven skin tone, slightly lopsided eyes, and dull, flat hair. In twenty seconds of time-lapse video, makeup artists and hair stylists turn her into a wide-eyed, big-haired beauty with sculpted cheeks and perfect skin. It's Extreme Makeover without the surgical gore. But that's only the beginning. Next comes the digital transformation, as a designer points-and-clicks on the mod- el's photo, giving her a longer, slimmer neck, a slightly narrower upper face, fuller lips, bigger eyes, and more space between her eyebrows and eyes. The perfected image rises to fill a billboard advertising a fictitious line of makeup. Fade to hlack, with the message "No wonder our perception of beauty is dis- torted." The video has attracted more than 3 million YouTiibe views. It also appears on Dove's campaignforreal- beautj'.com Web site, where it concludes, "Every girl deserves to feel heautifVil just the way she is." Ever>- girl certainly wants to, which explains the popularity of Dove's cam- paign. There's only one prohlem: Beauty exists, and it's unevenly distrib- uted. Our eyes and hrains pretty con- sistently like some human forms better EVOLUTION: Stills from Dove's viral-morketing video

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Page 1: The Truth About Beauty - threadbared · PDF fileThe Truth About Beauty ... tised its hair-care products by showing hundreds of women in identical plat- ... the Venus de Milo, and the

THE CRITICS 125MARCH 2007 THE ATLANTIC

CULTURE AND COMMERCE

It is the same in the eye of every beholder.

The Truth About BeautyBY VIRGINIA POSTREL

Cosmetics makers have always sold"hope in a jar"—creams and potions

that promise youth, beauty, sex appeal,and even love for the women who usethem. Over the last few years, the mar-keters at Dove have added some new-and-improved enticements. They'renow promising self-esteem and culturaltransformation. Dove's "Campaign forReal Beauty," declares a press release, is

"a global effort that is intended to serveas a starting point for societal changeand act as a catalyst for widening thedelinition and discussion of beauty."Along with its thigh-firming creams, self-tanners, and hair conditioners. Dove ispeddling the crowd-pleasing notionsthat beauty is a media creation, that rec-ognizing plural forms of beauty is thesame as declaring every woman heauti-ful, and that self-esteem means ignoringimperfections.

Dove won widespread acclaim inJune 2005 when it rolled out its thigh-firming cream with billboards of attrac-tive but variously sized "real women"frolicking in their underwear. It adver-tised its hair-care products by showinghundreds of women in identical plat-inum-blonde wigs—described as "thekind of hair found in magazines"-tossingofr those artificial manes and celebrat-ing their real (perfectly styled, colored,and conditioned) hair. It ran print adsthat featured atypical models, includ-ing a plump brunette and a ninety-five-year-old, and invited readers to choosebetween pejorative and complimentar\'adjectives: "Wrinkled or wonderful?"

"Oversized or outstanding?" The publicand press got tht* point, and Dove gotattention. Oprah covered the story, andso did the Today show. Dove's campaign,wvoie Advertising Age, "undermines the

basic proposition of decades of beauty-care advertising by telling women—andyoung girls—they're beautiful just theway they are."

Last fall. Dove extended its imagebuilding with a successftil bit of viralmarketing: a seventy-five-second onfinevideo called Evolution. Created byOgilvy & Mather, the video is a close-upof a seemingly ordinary woman, shot inharsh lighting that calls attention to heruneven skin tone, slightly lopsided eyes,and dull, flat hair. In twenty seconds oftime-lapse video, makeup artists andhair stylists turn her into a wide-eyed,big-haired beauty with sculpted cheeksand perfect skin. It's Extreme Makeoverwithout the surgical gore.

But that's only the beginning. Nextcomes the digital transformation, as adesigner points-and-clicks on the mod-el's photo, giving her a longer, slimmerneck, a slightly narrower upper face,fuller lips, bigger eyes, and more spacebetween her eyebrows and eyes. Theperfected image rises to fill a billboardadvertising a fictitious line of makeup.Fade to hlack, with the message "Nowonder our perception of beauty is dis-torted." The video has attracted morethan 3 million YouTiibe views. It alsoappears on Dove's campaignforreal-beautj'.com Web site, where it concludes,

"Every girl deserves to feel heautifVil justthe way she is."

Ever>- girl certainly wants to, whichexplains the popularity of Dove's cam-paign. There's only one prohlem:Beauty exists, and it's unevenly distrib-uted. Our eyes and hrains pretty con-sistently like some human forms better

EVOLUTION: Stills from

Dove's viral-morketing video

Page 2: The Truth About Beauty - threadbared · PDF fileThe Truth About Beauty ... tised its hair-care products by showing hundreds of women in identical plat- ... the Venus de Milo, and the

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than others. Shown photos of strang-ers, even babies look longer at the facesadults rank the best-looking. Whetheryou prefer Nicole Kidman to AngelinaJolie, Jennifer Lopez to Halle Berry, orQueen Latifah to Kate Moss may be amatter of taste, but rare is the beholderwho would declare Holly Hunter orWhoopi Goldberg—neither of whomis homely—more beautiful than any ofthese women.

For similar reasons, we still thrillto the centuries-old bust of Nefertiti,the Venus de Milo, and the exquisitefaces painted by Leonardo and Botti-celli. Greta Garbo's acting style seemsstilted today, but her face transcendstime. We know beauty when we see it,and our reactions are remarkably con-sistent. Beauty is not just a social con-struct, and not every girl is beautiful justthe way she is.

Take Dove's Evolution video. Thedigital transformation is fascinatingbecause it magically makes a beautifulwoman more striking. Her face's newgeometry triggers an immediate, visceralresponse—and the video's storytellingimpact is dependent on that predict-able reaction. The video makes its pointabout artifice only because most peoplefind the manipulated face more beauti-ful than the natural one.

In Survival of the Prettiest: The Sci-ence of Beauty, Nancy Etcoff, a psycholo-gist at Harvard Medical School, reportedon experiments that let people ratefaces and digitally "breed" ever-more-attractive composite generations. Theresults for female faces look a lot likethe finished product in the Dove video:"thinner jaws, larger eyes relative to thesize of their faces, and shorter distancesbetween their mouths and chins" in onecase, and "ftiller lips, a less rohust jaw, asmaller nose and smaller chin than thepopulation average" in another. Thesefeatures, wrote Etcoff, "exaggerate theways that adult female faces differ fromadult male faces. They also exaggeratethe youthfulness of the face." More thanyouth, the full lips and small jaws ofbeautiful women reflect relatively highlevels of female hormones and low levels

of male hormones—indicating greaterfertility—according to psychologistVictor Johnston, who did some of theseexperiments.

More generally, evolutionary psy-chologists suggest that the features wesee as beautifiil-including indicators ofgood health like smooth skin and sym-metry—have been rewarded throughcountless generations of competition formates. The same evolutionary' pressures,this research suggests, have biologicallyprogrammed human minds to perceivethese features as beautiful. "Some sci-entists believe that our beauty detectorsare really detectors for the combinationof youth and femininity," wrote Etcoff.Whether the beauty we detect arisesfrom nature or artifice doesn't changethat visceral reflex.

Perhaps surprisingly, Etcoff herselfadvised Dove on several rounds of sur-vey research and helped the companycreate workshops for girls. Dove toutsher involvement (and her doctorate andHat^'ard affiliation) in its publicity mate-rials. She sees the campaign as a usefulcorrective. Media images, Etcofl notes inan e-mail, are often so rarefied that "theychange our ideas about what people looklike and what normal looks like .., Ourbrains did not evolve with media, andmany people see more media images ofwomen than actual women. The con-trast effect makes even the most beau-tiful non-model look less attractive; itproduces a new 'normal.'"

Dove began its campaign by rec-ognizing the diverse manifestations ofuniversally beautiful patterns. The "realwomen" pictured in the thigh-cream bill-boards may not have looked like super-models, but they were ali young, withsymmetrical faces, feminine features,great skin, white teeth, and hourglassshapes. Even the most zaftig had rela-tively fiat stomachs and clearly defmedwaists. These pretty women were not arandom sample of the population. Dovediversified the portrait of beauty withoutabandoning the concept altogether.

But the campaign didn't stop there.Dove is defining itself as the brand thatloves regular women—and regular

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THE CRITICS 127MARCH 2007 THE ATLANTIC ,

women, by definition, iire not extraor-dinarily beautiful. The company can'tafibrd a precise definition of real beautythat mi^ht exdude half the population—not a good strategy for selling mass-market consumer products. So the cam-paign leaves real beauty ambiguous,enabling the viewers to fill in the conceptwith their own desires. Some take realbeauty to mean "nature unretouched"and interpret the Evolution video as sug-gesting that uncannily heautiftil faces arenot merely rare hut nonexistent. Oth-ers emph;isize the importance of charac-ter and personality: Real beauty comesfrom the inside, not physical appear-ance. And Advertising Age's interpreta-tion is common: that Dove is remindingwomen that "they're beautiful just theway they are "

Another Dove ad, focusing on girls'insecurities about their looks, concludes,

"Every girl deserves to feel good ahoutherself and see how beautiful she reallyis." Here, Dove is encouraging the myth

that physical beauty is a false concept,and, at the same time, falsely equatingbeaut)' with goodness and self-worth. Ifyou don't see perfection in the mirror,it suggests, you've been duped hy themedia and suffer from low self-esteem.

But adult women have a more real-istic view. "Ouly two percent of womendescribe themselves as beautiftil" trum-pets the headline of Dove's press release.Contrary to what the company wantsreaders to believe, however, that statis-tic doesn't necessarily represent a cri-sis of confidence; it may simply reflectthe power of the word beautiful. Dove'ssurveys don't ask women if they thinkthey're unattractive or ugly, so it's hardto differentiate between knowing youhave flaws, believing you're acceptablybut unimpressively plain, and feel-ing worthlessly hideous. In anotherDove survey, 88 percent of the Ameri-can women polled said they're at leastsomewhat satisfied with their face, while76 percent said they're at least somewhat

satisfied with their body. But dissatisfac-tion is not the same as unhappiness orinsecurity'.

Like the rest of the genetic lottery,beauty is unfair. Everyone falls short ofperfection, hut some are luckier thanothers. Real confidence requires self-knowledge, which includes recogniz-ing one's shortcomings as well as one'sstrengths. At a recent conference on bio-logical manipulations, 1 heard a philos-opher declare during lunch that she'dnever have plastic surgery or even dyeher hair. But, she confessed, she'd payjust about anything for fifteen moreIQ points. This woman is not inse-cure about her intelligence, which isfar above average; she'd just like to besmarter. Asking women to say they'rebeautiful is like asking intellectuals tosay they're geniuses. Most know theysimply don't qualify. 0

Virginia Postrel is an Atlantic contributing editor and theauthor of Tfie Substance o^ Sty/e (2003) and T/ie Futureand Its Eriemies (1998). Her blog, the Dynarnlst, con befound at www dynomisl.cam/weblog.

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