Dove's Real Beauty Campaign: a Reflection
Dove's Real Beauty Campaign: A Reflection
Jennifer Millard's Performing beauty: Dove's “Real Beauty” campaign was made to conduct a study on the results of the company Dove's Real Beauty Campaign onto it's targeted audience, women. Throughout the study Jennifer Millard explains that Dove's Real Beauty Campaign is a series of advertisements in magazines and commercials that promotes and empowers beauty for every women, no matter what other media outlets says. Millard uses focus groups and interviews with sixteen Canadian women to investigate the opinions; with ages ranging from fifteen to fifty-nine years old. Within the study, I found two main themes within Millard's article, which will be discussed and reflected on how it contributed to her study.
The first theme I found quite interesting in Millard's study was how she was connecting her definition of beauty towards a symbolic interactionist perspective by explaining how it is the culture and society that determines which features would be deemed as beautiful or not. I somewhat disagree with Millard's connection because while the media outlets to society what they should and should not be, most of the content was created by the outlets themselves with their opinions of what society should be. While the society may have certain opinions on these topics, the media elaborates on the opinions society has and makes them more negative and demanding then they actually are. For example, in Millard's study she shows the participants an advertisement from the Dove Real Beauty Campaign of a naked, overweight, middle-aged African American woman. After seeing many of the other Real Beauty Campaigns, this was the first advertisement that got a negative reaction from one of the focus groups.
“Sasha: Sometimes I’m like ew, I wonder why is this even in here? Like all these Dove ones, there is old wrinkly lady. Her legs are like this and you can’t see any- thing and it’s like why is she in here?
Monica: She’s naked
Jennifer Millard's Performing beauty: Dove's “Real Beauty” campaign was made to conduct a study on the results of the company Dove's Real Beauty Campaign onto it's targeted audience, women. Throughout the study Jennifer Millard explains that Dove's Real Beauty Campaign is a series of advertisements in magazines and commercials that promotes and empowers beauty for every women, no matter what other media outlets says. Millard uses focus groups and interviews with sixteen Canadian women to investigate the opinions; with ages ranging from fifteen to fifty-nine years old. Within the study, I found two main themes within Millard's article, which will be discussed and reflected on how it contributed to her study.
The first theme I found quite interesting in Millard's study was how she was connecting her definition of beauty towards a symbolic interactionist perspective by explaining how it is the culture and society that determines which features would be deemed as beautiful or not. I somewhat disagree with Millard's connection because while the media outlets to society what they should and should not be, most of the content was created by the outlets themselves with their opinions of what society should be. While the society may have certain opinions on these topics, the media elaborates on the opinions society has and makes them more negative and demanding then they actually are. For example, in Millard's study she shows the participants an advertisement from the Dove Real Beauty Campaign of a naked, overweight, middle-aged African American woman. After seeing many of the other Real Beauty Campaigns, this was the first advertisement that got a negative reaction from one of the focus groups.
“Sasha: Sometimes I’m like ew, I wonder why is this even in here? Like all these Dove ones, there is old wrinkly lady. Her legs are like this and you can’t see any- thing and it’s like why is she in here?
Monica: She’s naked