Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Feminist Analysis



Feminist Criticism

The Dove campaign for beauty is unique in that it wants to help women define their own inner and outer beauty based on realistic ideals, while the large majority of other companies who target women create the need for their product by insinuating that the beauty you are born with isn’t enough. Dove has taped the long the transition from ordinary woman to fashion model in order to emphasize the fact that advertising is selling a lie: a beauty that isn’t attainable without hair, make-up, lighting, and computerized help. Yet, there is nothing like this kind, and various similar associations dealing with feminine self-esteem, for men. As Simone de Beauvoir points out: “The attitude of defiance of many American women proves that they are haunted by a sense of their femininity. In truth, to go for a walk with one’s eyes open is enough to demonstrate that humanity is divided into two classes of individuals whose clothes, faces, bodies, smiles, gaits, interests, and occupations are manifestly different.” The campaign itself is evidence of the burden femininity has become, and furthermore, it begs the same question that Beauvoir poses: “What is a woman?”

Clearly, we cannot define woman based on the definitions of femininity, or at least those definitions of society, largely because men dictate society, as Beauvoir explains saying, “humanity is male and man defines woman not in herself but as relative to him”. If anyone can define the true essence of woman, it must be woman herself. Yet, this is not so easily answered because as Beauvoir indicates, while comparing the female gender to the capitalist’s proletariat, “The proletariat can propose to massacre the ruling class, and a sufficiently fanatical Jew or Negro might dream of getting sole possession of the atomic bomb and making humanity wholly Jewish or black; but woman cannot even dream of exterminating the males. The bond that unites her to her oppressors is not comparable to any other.” It seems as though the female desire to be equated to man as his fellow human being is blocking her from separating herself far enough to consider her own definition.

The Dove campaign clip further demonstrates this predicament, because although it is a nice gesture, Dove continues to use airbrushing and unrealistic female figures in their commercials to attract consumers.


WorkCited:

De Beauvoir, Simone. “From The Second Sex.” The Norton Anthology of

Theory and Criticism. Ed, Vincent B. Leitch. 2nd ed. W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.: New York, 2001. 1265-73. Print.

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