Dove's Real Beauty Sketches and Ironic Marketing of Shame

Have you seen the Dove's Real Beauty Sketches video?


I first came across this when my friends were sharing it on social media, talking about how powerful it was, that women should watch it. I also saw some posts in my social network feeds about what's wrong with it and I made my own observations, too.

1. Women aren't their own worst critics, as the video suggests. Society is.

Yes, many, if not most women, are very hard on themselves about how they look, but that comes from somewhere.

It comes from the media who bombard us with Photoshopped images of a very narrow perception of beauty: thin, curvy, pale skin, etc. It comes from companies that profit from making us insecure, constantly tells us to diet, to eliminate our wrinkles, to dye our grey hair, to push up our breasts, erase our acne, so we can be happy and successful.

It comes from companies that like sell products like Axe, which objectifies women in commercials to sell shit. And you know who makes Axe products? Unilever, the company that makes Dove products. Unilever also produces skin lightening products in "countries like India."



2. The commercial wants us to think: "See! You look young!" and dispel other testimony from the portrait subjects, like they are qualities to be ashamed of. Looking youthful or not is irrelevant to healthy body image. What matters is what you think of face shape or age or eye colour,  and what society thinks of these and others. And look again at the sketches that are based on the portrait subjects. They aren't ugly at all! They just don't conform to our society's perception of beauty. The sketches based on the subjects' friends' testimony produces socially acceptable images of beauty. The message here is that, if you feel better about yourself, you'll identify conventionally beautiful characteristics in your appearance.

3.  "Out of 6:36 minutes of footage, people of color are onscreen for less than 10 seconds. " I think that says it all. There were also no older women in the video. For a social experiment, this commercial is very socially exclusive.


4. This commercial ironically reinforces the high value our society places on external beauty. Why is the solution to women's insecurities always to make her feel and look or beautiful on the outside? And these women's insecurities (If they're even real... There is obviously some serious coercion in this commercial) aren't even about external beauty, if you think about it. It's about perceived worth. You don't think you are ugly unless someone has put you down. Insecurity is always socially constructed. It breaks my heart that we're supposed to be moved by the fact that, at the end of the commercial, the portrait subjects are moved to see that others perceive them as conventionally beautiful. It's supposed to be (and is) a relief. It's supposed to be (and is) the solution to unhappiness.
Dove hasn't changed a thing. I'm glad so many people have seen through it, but frustrated that this commercial exists and that many people did buy it. That sad background music probably didn't help.
Dove's Real Beauty Sketches reminds me of other backhanded, supposedly positive examples of beauty marketing. I wrote a post a while back about why I hate beauty counters in department stores.

For Men

In the latest heteronormative campaign that made my jaw drop, there was the expected stereotypical real men stuff: stag head mounted on the wall above the toilet, a warrior narrative; the host is NFL reporter Tony Sigarusa. He shows the other a guy Depends information on a TV sports style TV score image.

The products for manhood are called "Guards" and "Shields." It's obviously supposed to be a silly, fun campaign. It's supposed to be stereotypical, while making real men comfortable -- even proud to use the product. Because, joke or not, the images and narrative presented still represent classic understandings of manhood. Can you guess what the campaign is for?

Incontinence products for men from Depends. In other words, the penis machine of health products.

The web and TV campaign is called .... Wait for it... "Guard your manhood."

I interpreted two meanings in this phrase: protect your dignity and protect your genitals -- not just from physical incontinence issues, but from jerks who will try to steal your junk or poke them or laugh at their shape if the product can't support such substantial weight properly.

Now, I don't have a penis or testicles and I am not familiar with male-specific incontinence issues, if there are any, so maybe I don't really get it, but I don't think there's anything dignified about this campaign. It seems inspired by men's socially constructed insecurities about manhood. I can imagine the first marketing meeting:

Marketing Man 1: Incontinence is a girly, wimpy condition. Our leaky men out there know this and aren't going to buy our delicate design that we've marketed to women. Unless! We put a print of lumberjacks and fisherman on the product.

Marketing Man 2: No, no, no. A print of pick-up trucks!

Marketing Man 3: No! Don't you see? Prints are for children! What we need is a product that has a built-in holster.

Marketing Man 4: NO! We need to be practical. We need to send the message that we understand the medical, comfort needs of the men.

Marketing Man 5: Right. I've got it! Incontinence is a medical problem, so why don't we medicalize it? Surely, illness won't be interpreted as a girly experience, right?

Marketing Man 3: Of course illness is girly!! But you know what isn't? War.

Marketing Man 1: You can't say that anymore. The army lets in women now.

(The marketing men shake their heads, sigh, grunt and scratch their crotches.)

Marketing Man 3: Right. Well, then. Let's harken back to the days when war was tough and there were no women. You know, when they used shields.

Marketing Man 4: That's genius, Marketing Man 4! (Or whatever his name is.) We'll call them Shields. And we can also offer a higher level of protection with another manly name.

Marketing Man 2: How about Guards? Women can play man sports now, but they don't need Guards!

And so manly incontinence products were born. (Maybe that's not how it happened.)

After you watch the video, check out the Guard Your Manhood website. It's also hilariously heteronormative. There's a guy in the middle of the page, posing like a football coach, with a Depends logo on his chest and a whistle hanging from his neck. Fortunately, most of the rest of the website is respectful and informative.

Occupational Therapy Magazine Piece!

Check out the Spring 2013 issue of Rehab Matters for a piece I wrote about my personal experiences with occupational therapy and my suggestions to optimize the practice. This magazine is for members of VRA Canada, vocational rehabilitation professionals, so I am thrilled that my insight may influence their practices.

In this piece, I wrote about the potential of occupational therapy to empower patients, and writing this for the VRA audience also empowered me. I used to blog about my health in this blog to empower myself by educating my readers. Occupational therapy has been a positive experience for me, but the intermittent, often invisible nature of my symptoms, and their variability based on activity, environment  and my health status, has proven to be quite a barrier for me to get effective treatment and respect. The piece in this issue about invisible disability and employment illustrates how stigma and preconceived notions hurt affected people.

MIT Invisible Motion Program and Reporting Unethical

The New York Times Blog recently featured a post about a project from MIT that uncovers invisible movement in video and explores how this technology can unobtrusively evaluate health. As you'll see in this video, the technology, called Eulerian Video Magnification, makes respiration and pulse rate visible.



I find it peculiar and unsettling that the author of this post and the creators of this video did not explore the ethical problems with this technology, not even after explaining that the code required to enable the technology was posted online, available to "anyone who wanted to use it," (who had the necessary skills to run it).

How would you like it if someone could film you, or even apply the technology to existing film of you, and see how fast your heart is beating, without your permission. It even happened in this video! (Presumably, Christian Bale didn't permit this dude to use this technology on him, then release it online.)

Some people argued that this technology is unethical because it could enable a police state or people could incorrectly or illogically assume things by evaluating heart rate. You can't tell why the person has a rapid heartbeat. It's seldom active now thanks to medication, but I have a mild condition that makes my heart race inappropriately.

This technology doesn't just present privacy issues because of the objectives of people who use it and because heart rate can measure emotions.

Why should anyone be allowed to evaluate my heart rate without my knowledge or permission, for any reason? It's private. It's inside of me, so it belongs to me and me alone.

Yes, private even if I have nothing to be anxious about, even if I've done nothing wrong. It's private even if I do have something to be anxious about, have done something wrong. It's private if I'm aware I'm being examined by video in this way and also if I'm not. It's private even if I'm totally calm. It's private even if heart rate wasn't impacted by emotions. It's private if the motives of people using this technology are good (up for debate!). It'd be private even if I didn't have a heart issue. It's private, even though I do.

I am repeatedly baffled by how many scientists, journalists, politicians justify new technologies/uses and fail to explore, at least not adequately, the ethical issues. I think this technology would only be ethical if used with people's permission, for medical reasons only, and their permission is optional, no recourse if you say no. MIT can restrict this technology (as you remember, they chose not to), but even MIT did, hackers and others could get a hold of it.

What do you think of this program by MIT and how it was reported?

What have I been up to?

What a great week!

I had a wonderful time interviewing folk-jazz musician Jessica Stuart about filming her latest music video, for Winter Warm, on the Scarborough Bluffs, a gorgeous location. I had an almost even better time writing about it! It felt so good to get back to my journalism roots and this experience has taught me that I need to get back to it, somehow. I love researching people's backgrounds and work and infusing the knowledge I gain into my approach to interviewing, and the questions themselves. I love stringing the information in my notes into a narrative.

Speaking of music, space blues musician Delta Will had an amazing concert last night to promote his debut ep "Transcendental Visits." His performance was, as usual, amazing and a lot of people came. I was happy for Charles and also very proud of myself because I helped him promote the show and his ep with Toronto blogger relations and a buzz marketing campaign. I was thrilled when he thanked me, among some really great people I know, after his set and, as I discovered this morning, in the album sleeve!

I also met with a really nice job recruiter and it looks like I will get an interview for a really cool paid public relations internship for a wonderful non-profit organization (not through recruiter).

I am so glad I identified these great opportunities to not only exercise my creative muscle, but to support causes and artists I really believe in.

This really makes up for last week. I slipped and fell on the ice twice in three days! I'm still sore.