The link above is to a commercial created by Dove about Media affecting body image.
Answer the following.
What is the goal of the commercial? How does it try to bring the message across?
Do you think the video is a true reflection of society, therefore, is the sexualization of young girls is an issue?
How are the extreme "beauty" images being presented in to commercial, and how do they support Dove's message?
Who is Dove trying to appeal to, and are they effective?
The goal of this commercial is to educate parents. Dove wants them to realize the images and advice the beauty industries are giving their daughters from a very young age. The influence these advertisements have on young girls is enormous. To get their message across to viewers, Dove begins with an image of a young, innocent girl. After focusing on her, the quickly go through numerous images and videos advertisers bombard young girls with each and every day. They show the products that people use in order to alter themselves, such as creams or surgery. This may be a reflection of society, but it is more prevalent in populated urban areas. For example, New York is a city with a very large fashion industry and they would probably put more of these advertisement out than Columbus, Ohio would. These ads may promote sexualization of young girls because many girls strive to be like the women they see in magazines. The quick succession of the extreme "beauty" images shows the viewer that there a many more out there than they might expect. Young girls are seeing these and in their mind, it's okay to pursue beauty in this way because it seems like everyone else is. These extreme "beauty" messages support Dove's message because they want to show their target audience, parents, what the beauty industry shows their daughters. Dove wants parents to talk to their daughters about natural and inner beauty.
ReplyDeleteDove's last line "talk to your daughter before the beauty industry does," really speaks for itself in describing their message. Dove is saying that young girls are affected by images of these extreme beauty instances every day and they need to be taught that that is not what is "normal." Parents need to educate their children on what they see. Its big to understand that Dove is not trying to get parents to limit what their daughters see, but instead talk to them about what they are going to see. Suggesting that its inevitable that these extreme beauty messages will be available for the daughters of today.
ReplyDeleteThe goal is clearly to educate parents about how media can affect kids. The commercial was trying to get the parent’s to educate their kids before the media gets to them. The message was brought across through the use of other commercials of beauty products and diet pill. Also at the end of the commercial, the message “talk to your daughter before the beauty industry does” was displayed on the screen. I do believe this is a true reflection of society. We are surrounded by ads about being “beautiful”, ads about foundations, diet pills, weight watchers, and plastic surgery. I do think the sexualization of young girls is an issue. All these commercials and ads encourage little girls to use foundations and makeups when they don’t even need it. Most little girls have great skin and they don’t need makeup to enhance their beauty. Some of the extreme “beauty” images were an image of a woman throwing up in order to lose weight, the use of surgery to look “beautiful”. The commercial was showing the negative effects of how media and advertisement can change a person’s view on themselves and it supports the Dove message. Dove was trying to appeal mostly to parents, and they are effective. The commercial first shows a young innocent girl, the commercial was trying to use emotional appeal.
ReplyDeleteThe intention of this video is very clear that is to prevent young girls from trying to imitate models in pop culture. This video seemed very convincing to me when i first viewed it because of its powerful images in such rapid fire pace. The director of this video shows a young girl at first in order to try to show the innocent of young girls watching these "hollywood made" models. The next thing that jumped out at me was sound effects that the director seems to isolate.These sound effects are prevalent in the scene when they show the plastic surgery and the sounds are isolated in order to catch the attention of the view and focus them in on the disturbing images being shown. The ideal audience here is clearly young girls and their mothers, but the director uses scare tactics and vivid images to appeal to a broader audience. The only thing wrong with this advertisement is that it is sponsored by Dove a beauty care company. So it is hard to be completely convinced they are fighting for this cause but with suspended judgement this advertisement does work.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you guys that the target audience was little girls and parents of these little girls. Although this commercial is clearly geared more toward warning the little girl about the beauty industry i feel it is also trying to appeal the parent as well. At one point when they are showing clips of advertisements go by the screens a lot of the women in these commercials seemed to be middle aged. The director added this to show the mothers of the ads are just as vulnerable to these beauty industries as their little daughters. So in that sense i feel this commercial is two- fold for parents that is to educate their daughters about the beauty industries dark side and to lead by example and realize they are just as vulnerable.
ReplyDeleteThe target audience was the parents to educate what the beauty industry had done to society. This commercial has a negative effect as well. If the young girls don't understand what this commercial is trying to say, they may take it as what society wants them to look like. The fast pace of changing images of skinny models, the products, weight loss and everything else that is show will affect the people watching it some will take it as the way to be beautiful and others as not real beauty. I was disappointed in the commercial because they only showed the society's image of beauty, Dove should have also showed natural beauty and that products are not going to make you beautiful.
ReplyDeleteI think the goal of this commercial is to convince people that the beauty industry is very harmful. I noticed that at the beginning of the commercial, the tone of the music is gradually going up while it repeats "here it comes". Then suddenly comes to frequent snap shots about different kinds of beauty industries. They begin with all kinds of beauties, like models, hot girls in MV, posts and billboards. It seems to attract people and show how fancy to be beautiful women. Later on,the commercial turns to show procedures of being "beautiful". Some are disgusting, like a woman standing on the scales and a fast motion of her body from fat to slim then I guess because she stops taking the pills and diets, she bounces back again, back and forth. Also a lot of snap shots on plastic surgeries on different parts of human bodies. All these create a huge visual impact on audience, and it comes to the end that how we going to prevent this from happening on our children. This is how the commercial convey the message. I think the commercial does truly reflect the society. Nowadays, people's perspective of beauty is mainly on appearance, meanwhile inner beauty or the beauty of personality tends to be ignored. This commercial appeal to parents I think, because the past part, it says "talk to your daughter before the beauty industry does". Because teenage are at the certain age that they want to gain more attention from other, also they would copy just based on what they see and hear. So it's very important that parents talk about this issue with their children. And avoid misfortune from happening. Therefore I insist that this commercial targets on parents.
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ReplyDeleteI also agree with Greg about Dove wants to flight the issue since it is a beauty care. It's really hard to persuade people at this point. In order to make it more convincing, I think it should involve some advanced technologies of beauty care, or how natural the material they use for their product. But, regardless of Dove, this specific type of company, I still think the commercial is persuasive.
ReplyDeleteThe goal of this commercial is to get parents to talk to their children before they are persuaded by the beauty industry into changing their appearance by taking drastic measures. Another goal is to try to get the parents to see that Dove is taking action and therefore is the beauty company that has good morals so people should buy their products from them. This commercial is an accurate depiction of society. Girls are expected to be productive members of society just like men but they also have to be pretty according to society. In the commercial girls go to extreme lengths to become physically beautiful so beauty is being depicted in a negative way to get parents to take action on the message Dove is trying to convey.
ReplyDeleteThe main idea of this video is obviously to stress the importance of talking to young girls about self-image. The video could be considered timely because the use of beautiful women in advertisement is everywhere, regardless as to where you are though other places may have it more. The rules to how much skin can be show in these advertisements are becoming more and more lenient and they give young girls a bad impression. Though Dove may genuinely care about how these images effect young girls, they may care a little more about the type of reputation they will hold with the viewers. Women want to buy from a women-friendly and likeable company that seems to respect them and the different shapes and sizes they come in. This video could easily be an advertisement strategy when showing that the video was funded and supported by Dove.
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ReplyDeleteI agree that the message was geared toward gaurdians of young daughters, but more specifically to female gaurdians. Though male's go through pressures of their own, they are typically less likely to understand the types of pressure women go through in society. Dove is a company that regular tries to appeal to women because its products are primarly geared toward women and self-image but they go more with a "every woman is a beautiful woman" type of attitude. This video furthers that idea that Dove cares about women of all shapes and size and now of all ages as well. Women generally have more concern towards this type of subject because they go through this at most ages and can relate. Because of this, women are more likely to pay attention and be affected by the message of the commercial when seeing it during everyday life.
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ReplyDeleteThe goal of the commercial is to make sure society's view on beauty does not affect girl's view of themselves and how beautiful they really are. The video starts out by showing a quick glance of a little girl then very fast frames of beautiful women and products they use to get beautiful artificially. The frames show unhealthy habits and lifestyles to discourage girls from doing such things to their bodies. I think this is a true reflection of society. Now today more than ever, people are judged on their looks. Girls especially take caution as to how they dress, what brands they wear, what make up they put on and so forth. The sexualization of young girls happens a lot today, so this is a very applicable video. Dove shows pictures of extreme beauty by showing models, dancers, spokespersons and so forth. Then they show dieting pills, girls getting fatter then skinnier and cosmetic surgery. Dove is trying to show that these aren't needed to make a women beautiful and that they are unhealthy habits. The commercial is trying to reach out to parents and guardians with daughters so they do not fall into the false state of beauty the media and society displays. I'd say that Dove did quite an excellent job in doing so by showing bad side-effects, eating disorders, and unorthodox ways of cutting weight and getting slim.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I found the commercial interesting I did not find it extremely interesting. I agree with Elizabeth and I felt the end was lacking something. I found the music a bit annoying and does not seem to compliment the message or the commercial very well. The commercial is also using scare tactics to scare parents into caring more about their children.
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