Beauty Ideals
 

Here's an interesting short film about the evolution of an model from pre-shoot to finished ad campaign.

I always find it weird that even after a lovely woman is worked on for hours by a professional makeup/lighting/hair/photography crew, the powers that be still have the resulting images photoshopped. It's absurd.

And then on top of it women beat themselves up for not looking like that all the time.

I'm all kinds of hooray for Dove and their "Real Beauty" campagin. I know that to some extent it's just marketing hoo-ha, but they seem to really be trying to get women to wake up and smell the celluite, and love it :)

Thanks for sharing the movie. It's really interesting to see what models really look like vs what they end up looking like after "editing." Personally, I understand the point of view of the corporation using "ideal beauty" (a term hotly debated- here I am using the term to refer to conditions that are generally thought of as pleasing to look at for humans- symmetry, evenness, that kinda thing) to sell an item. I do believe, however, that too many women latch on to the idea of looking a certian way, and it's good that something is being done to point out how silly that is in the first place.

Wow! That is remarkable. I really didn't know that much photo-tweaking was done for these images. And even if it is just another marketing tool for Dove, it's one I can respect...how often can you say that?

It is interesting to watch how they do that. But then again people like to look at beautiful people. At least I do.

I don't judge myself based on models though because I know that it is fake. Well, when I was a teenager I didn't know it was fake and that was hard on self-image. Especially, when guys are comparing you to the models of the day. My ex had posters of Cindy Crawford and some other swimsuit model that I flipped off everyday. :lol: I'm glad that they are making it more known that the model beauty is a fake beauty and no one really looks like that. Dove has a good marketing campaign going on as mixedmedia pointed out.

Also, I'm just glad jj doesn't have to do that much airbrushing on my shoots. And I can do my hair and makeup myself. :)

My aunt owns a very large modelling agency in Manhattan and has for over 30 years.
At the age of 18, she declared she wanted me to model. I thought she was nuts. I had bad skin, crooked teeth....then she showed me a poster of this gorgeous blonde in Jordache jeans, topless and told me it was this mousy little thing with buck teeth sitting off to the side.
The Dove film is slightly exagerated, but I emphasize 'slightly'. In order to start the career, I would have had to go to Paris for at least six months for runway and photo shoots. Clients need models with at least good 'bones; they don't want to pay for a lot of touching up and you can't look thin or graceful on a runway with Photoshopping. There has to be some 'projection'.
If you watch 'America's Next Top Model', you'll see that what you might say is beautiful doesn't come off as such and vice versa. Some of those natural beauties look like hell when made up for the photoshoots.( And if you think I really look as good as that avatar, I got this swamp land in Florida......)
We most definitely have a warped sense of what's beautiful; it's like watching a magic show and swearing it's all real. Plastic surgery (which I will probably have at some point, myself), non-celebrity celebrities, models who do not much more than look good, yet have their own shows, porn....all cast this pall of making us think we're not up to snuff. Then when we're told we're 'beautiful', we can't believe it. I know that at times, I can be and I don't mean with Photoshopping, etc. Real life, too, needs projection. And if we just go around thinking we're not up to snuff because of these false ideals, then the projection becomes negative and that's not beautiful or helpful.

I'm starting to think that their whole campaign is a contradiction. Oh yeah, we're beautiful just the way we are, as long as we buy more stuff.

I don't know that it's a contradiction as much as it is a clever little campaign that tells women 'you're beautiful and you'd be more 'you' if you use this'.
I went into their forums and read a couple of threads about 'older women'; how beautiful they are just by being older, yada yada...and I responded saying that I felt much of the comments from the under-30's were condescending. Accept lines and imperfections just because I'm not 30?? I don't think so....I'm all for plastic surgery (within reason-not some LaToya Jackson re-do), all for fighting the ravages of time any way anyone sees fit.
There were posts about how women who once thought they were 'ugly and fat', now 'love themselves for who they are', to which I responded if you think you are ugly and fat, you still don't love yourself-do something about it instead of settling for it.
In short, much of it was a crock of shit....

This is so perfect. My daughter was talking about some pictures in a magazine just the other day. She said she wanted to look like that. I was trying to explain to her that the person she saw in the picture probably didn't really look like that. I will have to show her this clip. Perfect timing. She's only 6 yrs old but she's already concious of the signals that she's getting from the media and her friends. I am not very hung up on my looks, in fact I rarely use makeup or criticise my body out loud. Most I say is that I need to eat more vegetables or taking better care of my face to prevent the acne I'm prone to. But not really critical of things I cannot change by treating my body right. Thanks for sharing that video. It's a good springboard for me to continue talking to my daughter about this issue.

i absolutely love dove's campagin for real beauty. truely moving videos.

I mean I wouldn't MIND looking like some of those girls, and some are really really pretty even before makeup and such. I am content that I look halfway decent without doing much, that to me is good enough. Makeup is fun to play with, but not something I spend time and effort on a daily basis.

As long as there are women, there with be beauty ideals. We can never escape that.

This is true. For example, I have met Cindy Crawford and seen her without a stitch of makeup and I can tell you with complete honesty that she is a knockout. Stunningly beautiful. Most of the supermodels are "close to perfection." That's why they are supermodels. I think the real travesty is the manipulation of the images of women in more pedestrian advertising roles and, most likely, celebrity photography, such as the woman in the Dove message, to make them seem "close to perfect" as well. Manipulating their images in such a way that no amount of plastic surgery could match for the ordinary woman. I do think that is a disturbing and dangerous "beauty ideal" to set for young women.

I showed this film to both of my daughters and they watched it over and over and over and told all of their friends about it - it really impacted them. I think these sorts of exposes could be really healthy for our young girls who are dealing with the prevalence of these images in our culture.

I think it's a good concept in the long run, yes it will sell more but I think it helps shed more hope to the "average" woman that even models have to be made up to be beautiful in the grand scheme of things. I enjoyed the video, thought it was interesting. I had my hair and makeup done for my senior pictures two summers ago and I didn't even look like myself, I was very unhappy with them. Everyone told me they looked beautiful, but I kept saying it didn't look like me. I wish I had done it myself. Oh well. For prom I did better, minus my hair.
Dove is on a good track, similar to the hanes commercials with the ladies in their underwear of all sizes and shapes.
I liked it. Something else I think girls need to remind themselves of, atleast in my opinion men know that when they see such beautiful women like that it takes alot of time, makeup, money, and a completely different lifestyle to be that way, girls of average life don't have those resources or time commitments to spend on their looks often times, atleast I don't. I get ready in about 15 to 20 minutes including a shower and hairdrying. I think guys know the difference between real and fake. I used to feel very self concious when a guy would say a girl was hot but I realized yea, there's nothing wrong with it. So I'd comment that they're hot too, and agree. Guys wouldn't be with you if there wasn't something special/attractive about you in the first place. I don't think women should set such high bars on the superficial scale such as model-type beauty. It is all relative, men like different things as do women. Beautiful things are there, real or not. People like beauty.
I strive to look the best I can but I lack the time or effrot to indulge in it, I won't ever be a model, there's no point to try to live like one.

I don't think the idea of what is beautiful is only what is fed to us by the media. I'm pretty sure that we do have an internal sensor of what's beautiful to us. I don't like some of the guys my best friend likes and vice versa, and that's because we like different things. Some things are commonly considered beautiful. If you see someone who you think is stunningly beautiful, then you know it. Because you have to control yourself not to drool slightly, right? And like another poster has said, some people are stunning even face to face. It could be all the symmetry and right proportions deal, leading us to believe they have good genes and that, but I think maybe there's something more intangible to it. I can look at someone and recognize instinctively that they are beautiful outwardly, in my perception.

I think part of the problem for us women is that most men are very visual creatures, and so beauty is an important element to some extent for many of them, something they can't separate from the rest of the "package". Women do it too, but I think to a lesser extent. And then some men also believe the crap fed to them by the media and so they want someone just so. At least for me, I have heard things from men I know and ex-boyfriends where it made me wonder what they're thinking, while also planting seeds of self-doubt in my head. I'd like to apologize to any men reading this who feel offended but remember I'm only generalizing.