Dove is a company that has made strides recently to reshape the image of beauty it presents. Their campaign "real Beauty" has made headlines and been complimented on many fronts. I came across their ads and watched a few including the one above. I felt that something is still missing. The add above calls the transformation of the model "evolution." Are they saying that to evolve means you must conform to a standard beauty. That you are only better, how we interpret the word evolved, if you are more beautiful. As I watched more of their videos I feel that even with the best attempt what they are portraying still presents a single story of beauty. The other ads would begin and end with white girls, the idea that interspersing other ethnic groups meant they weren't the focus and that Dove still falls short.
This idea of a single story of beauty can be seen in many feminist writings. Kathleen Le Besco talks about beauty and body size. One of the things she mentions is that when looking at the preference presented for body size the assumptions must be questioned. When talking about the conclusions drawn about perfect body type she says that:
"-a conclusion that begs feminist deconstruction for its overreliance on male sanctification of female bodies."
Her idea that beauty has become a social construct that is used to marginalize most women and limit their potential propels the issue of body identity into the realm of feminist issue. Amelia Richards agrees and asserts that body image is third wave feminism's central issue. Even the dove piece using the word evolution is pushing the assumption that possibly only thin white women with clear skin and perfect figures are those who should be given equal opportunities. IS THAT REALLY EQUALITY?
So what? What if feminism did get involved. What if society was transformed to embrace full lips, almond shaped eyes, darker skin? Margaret Hunter in her book, Race Gender, and the Politics of Skin Tone, suggests this very thing:
“No one knows what a feminist insurgency against the beauty regime would look like, but it might include a more public and lively discussion of beauty rituals and a possible rejection of many coercive beauty rituals.”
So what does this mean? This means that we become honest with ourselves about how we define beauty first. We choose to name our assumptions. Just like the person who is racist can not break free of their bias until they acknowledge it, women can not see past the commercialized beauty until we name it and acknowledge what we are accepting is a created image. A de-evolution of tolerance and sisterhood instead of an evolution. If third waves feminism’s call is on the onslaught of ideal body image then we need to face that we have bought into and perpetuated a single face of beauty.
I am not sold on the fact that beauty is the issue that needs and should unite third wave feminism, but maybe the larger issue of living in a false world in the US should unite us locally. Maybe the uniting issue of all the topics discussed so far is that we need to be real. We need to be real about who we are, where our products come from, what the actual costs are of the decisions we make and who profits. We need to be real in how we view each other and what assumptions we make. We need the real us to embrace other people so that in our own lives we are naming the stereotypes and resisting the value judgments that are tied to them. This even extends to our reactions about beauty. We need to all embrace the reality of a multitude of faces being beautiful. If you decide to not wear make up and I decide to get plastic surgery we need to bolster each other while being aware of the ways in which our decisions are shaped. We need to recreate tolerance in a world where only one image of beauty is presented.
Brava!!
ReplyDelete