Journal Entry 5

The article I read was Dove doesn’t Redefine Beauty it Reinforces it, by Beauty Redefined Network. This article discusses how Dove’s campaign for redefining beauty is not all that genuine. The article discusses how dove is telling women to love them selves yet still sells products for wrinkle removal and other beauty enhancements. The article also brings up the idea that dove is trying to empower women by helping them find their own physical beauty. They are not helping women discover their beauty inside and out. Dove started a campaign to get women to take pictures of them and then review them on later days and realize just how beautiful they are. The problem with this is that they do not have women to evaluate what they do on a day to day basis and see how that makes them beautiful, the campaign is just to increases ones ideas about their face value.

Beauty Redefined would argue that my last article does do something right by teaching women that the media’s idea of beauty is wrong. “We fully recognize that many people see Dove’s marketing as a “step in the right direction.” We can concede on that point,” (www.bautyredefined.net). Although, they would argue that more needs to be done after showing the women that those beauty ideas are false. All of the media’s ideas of body image are not physically possible (Hass). Beauty redefined would tell you this fact then proceed to tell you that whether or not you are capable of achieving the medias ideal body you are more than that. “we’re not just expanding the definition from “thin, young, white” to “less thin, slightly older, and any skin tone with Eurocentric features;” we’re expanding it from “thin, young, white” to “you are so much more than just a body to be looked at.” We don’t want girls and women to feel good about their appearances; we want them to feel good about themselves” (beautyredifined.com).

This article goes a little deeper than my last article. This changes the idea that one should be taught that certain ideals are not obtainable or they are fake. It throws that whole notion out of the window and tells the reader to forget all the ideas of appearances and that body image should start with self worth. This changes my article somewhat.

To further the exploration of this argument I want to research what other organizations feel that self worth is the root of body image and how society should implement this. How self worth should then be portrayed in the media. Maybe I would have to study famous media characters.