Dear Karen, Andi, and others-
Sorry to throw a wrench in the works of good teaching examples, but
here's another twist:
Dove soap has a new campaign to feature "real women" in their ads and
even has a website to celebrate this:
http://www.campaignforrealbeauty.com/
Gotta love the URL, too!
I am not a reader (I suppose I would fall into the category of
"ogler") of fashion magazines, but I imagine Dove is an advertiser.
I think this statement by Dove would provide another good teaching-
moment...what statement is Dove making by going against the grain of
"normal" advertisers? By commencing the "Campaign for Real Beauty"
will the social definition of "Real Beauty" change? Dove is staging
a campaign...is the campaign to change our definition of "real
beauty" or is the campaign to sell more soap?
Jason
On Aug 17, 2005, at 9:28 AM, Karen Loeb wrote:
Yeah, you know, I think I got the Merchants idea from you, Andi.
Oh, when I
present the scenario of the high school girl starving herself, etc.
I get a
little dramatic and thrust a recent fashion magazine picked up from a
doctor's office or (sob!) my daughters, and challenge a (female)
student to
find a model in it that isn't pencil-thin. Then I ask the student
at the end
of the class to show us any non-thin models she found, which, of
course, she
hasn't, but one student a few years ago told the class she didn't
bother to
look because she knew she wouldn't find any. I don't recommend
giving the
fashion magazine to the guys--they just end up ogling the scantily
clad
models--defeats the whole purpose of the exercise.
Karen
