Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty – Is it all right?

When I started my graduate studies at Columbia University, I hadn’t expected to feel like I wanted to become an advocate for anything. As a media professional, my job has always been to act in the best interest of my client. Sometimes, I would feel conflicted. I would want to tell the client to perhaps rethink their position. Rarely did that happen.

It is even rarer for any company to break with the “status quo” in this media environment. But the company Dove did just that when they started to shun the super skinny airbrushed model pictures and launched bold new advertising featuring real women.

Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty launched just a few years ago. The results of the campaign have been staggering. In  the United Kingdom, sales rose over 150% by many accounts. In the United States, media attention was celebrating the efforts to show real women in unaltered photographs. Sales spiked when Oprah brought the real women, the creatives and executives on her show, then launched a contest with the Dove to search for more “real women” and tell their stories.

That was a coup that could not be expected. Oprah by many is considered the “goldmine” opportunity for products for women. The interesting thing is that she never once raved about the products. It was always about the campaign Dove launched to promote healthy attitudes of women’s bodies.

The video link above showcases the company’s video “onslaught.” A young girl is smiling for the camera before it cuts to all the images she will see of health, beauty & fitness in one day. It includes obsessive working out, fake pitches from products, cosmetic surgery and medical issues including bulimia and anorexia.

The shock value of the video is staggering when you look at the sheer number of images, hence the title “onslaught.”

I have been a fan of this initiative for sometime. But recently, it came into conflict with my day job as a publicist for the fitness industry. How can I be behind a campaign that celebrates women who are out of shape and essentially unhealthy?

I am not a doctor, and we know that women are beautiful in their array of shapes & sizes they come in. But is this depiction healthy? Does it matter if it is not?  

The bulimic, skinny airbrushed models are definitely not an ideal for any young girl to aspire too. But, should they just rest on their laurels if they have that few extra pounds? What about issues associated with extra weight: diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, etc?

I will always applaud the work Dove has done to promote a broader view of what is beautiful. But I can’t help but wonder if the company has not yet hit on the right image. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. But healthy & fit we have standards for. It’s a shame we can’t get the two to meet.

What should we be teaching kids about posting pictures on-line?

The Ad Council last year created a wonderful video aimed at teenagers to warn them about posting pictures on-line (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ja8xtQNQYDQ). In it, a young girl puts a picture of herself on a bed on a bulletin board in her school. Her fellow students each look at it make comments, and then take it down, only for it to magically reappear on the board. The idea, your picture will always now be available to anyone on-line because they can keep copies for themselves.

With digital / mobile technology more affordable then ever, tech savvy teens have created an explosion in on-line communications more than ever before. A decade earlier, it was easy to patrol with internet services like NetNanny or CyberPatrol. Parents could block access and prevent kids from utilizing certain sites.

Those same kids are now teenagers and hold the ability to visit the sites and post anything they wish via their mobile phones and PDAs. But who is teaching them what is right and what is wrong?

For generations, parents and educators have battled over what social topics should be taught and not taught in schools, SexEd being at the top of the list. But today, many parents don’t understand digital technology and have no idea what their children can access.

It seems our educational system is ready for a change, and classes in digital technology and responsibility need to be at the top of the list. The alarming trend of “sexting,” teens sending nude or semi-nude pictures to friends or social networking sites, has been a hot topic for the news the past couple of years. The Ad Council’s video, cited above, tries to teach teens the dangers of this in a very family friendly way.

Kids and teens have more access to the digital realm then ever before. But what are we teaching them? The fear of trying to educate them under the “guise” that it will just tempt them to do it is just not an option anymore. This silent treatment of a serious issue is just too damaging for a fragile group. They need to know now what their actions can trigger we ever hope to have them use it responsibly.