I also wanted to comment on one of the comments.

“And yes… as an early-twenties male, I realize I’m part of the crowd responsible for judging what “beauty” is. To me, that final product isn’t “beauty” at all — it’s fake. There’s a difference between someone who’s beautiful after spending an hour putting on makeup, and someone who’s beautiful five seconds after waking up in the morning.”

I just want to say that I don’t really find this a comforting statement at all. Someone who’s beautiful to basic male standards five second after waking up is 1) still being beautiful to male standards and 2) very lucky indeed. I don’t know, just something about the idea that I should have to be beautiful five seconds after waking up rubs me the wrong way. I’ve been up for about an hour now, still unshowered and working from bed with my laptop, glasses on instead of contacts, hair tangled, and whatnot, and I’m really not sure anyone would say “wow, congratulations, you are one of of the REALLY beautiful women who doesn’t NEED photoshop to look beautiful!” Like, I think the point is supposed to be you don’t need to be “Beautiful” or whatever to feel good about yourself. I mean most people aren’t “beautiful gorgeous” with or without an hour of help, and can we please worry about something else than beauty?

Anyway back to CHI, thanks for the chance to vent.

I can see a number of mashups coming out of this – wonder what it’d look like in reverse…

And that “Slip of the Tongue” film, wow! I have to see it again to try to catch everything he says… but WOW!

Personally, I think this is a great video and have already shared it with my tweenage daughter. We are having on-going dialogue about self-esteem and body image, about values and expectations (personal, familial, social). This is a great piece on which to open more discussion, and some of it won’t even discuss our culture’s obsession with feminine physical perfection.

How much of what we see is manipulated, if even ads for daily usage products are so highly processed? What is real beauty? At what point are we being controlled by on-board and wet-wired archetypal memetics buried in our genes, to the point where we not only seek predetermined codified beauty, but create it on demand? (Remember that much of what humans identify as beauty is really genetic programming; certain dimensional relationships in physical attributes and symmetry indicate health and genetic viability, read at subconcious and unconscious levels.) Animals recognize and appreciate traits, some being perceived markers of health and fitness; would we be different than them, save for our larger ability to manipulate appearance?

Would a survey indicate a bias against the ad by a particular gender for this reason? Would they feel gamed unconsciously?

Thanks again, danah. Good food for thought.

Dove is basically saying “look how companies are *fabricating* an image of beauty. We will show you what is *real* beauty.”

Ooooh wait, wait, you are telling me that there is a real beauty? What are the criterias for this real beauty? What are the limits of fabrications, when I put beautiful clothes that hides some parts of my body or shows others, Am I fabricating an image?

Basically with this video, Dove is fabricating another dream relying on the idea of virtue of people. This is another fabrication of exactly the same kind that the ones they are supposedly pointing out. They don’t fight for the benefits of North American women, they do it for market shares.

Fabrication is part of our life. When we read a poem, it is all about fabrication, about illusions, etc. So why is that different? Because a poem is not here to abuse your feelings, emotions for buying things.

The problem with maked up ladies on posters is NOT the fact that they are fake, but the fact they use a certain image of beauty in certain part of the world to SELL THINGs. The abuse is here. And Dove is doing exactly the same.

This video for me is not wise, it is as dangerous, even more dangerous, because it relies on the idea of a moral virtue.

For those interested, here’s another example of extensive retouching.

Thanks for your interesting posts in general that have inspired me for many years in many different ways (it began with your Ani lyrics page, I was amazed by your posts about (queer) identity issues and slowly got interested in social software and blogging – I am now beginning to write my master thesis about the influence of blogs on politics).

AND

I think it’s great Dove is doing this. For a couple reasons, really.

First, yes, it’s selling a product BUT its selling to a market that demands and uses Dove because it’s a good product and their mothers used and trusted Dove. I think it’s great that Dove is using their big, multigenerationally trusted brand name to show women don’t need to be colored and photoshopped to be pretty.

Second, they use women in their commercials that aren’t overly made up. They’re honest that yes, we’re selling this product but we’re not selling you the hype the rest of the industry is.

To me, that’s priceless.