From Kimdog's Blog...

When I read her blog today... I had to pass it along... Pls read all the way to the bottom and see my Comment..

Dove Feature Girls
This is the photo that is in question...

fdg


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I generally try not to get to preachy in this particular forum. But I found this great article that sums up quite eloquently the bizarre reaction to the Dove "Real Women" ads. Because amazingly enough, there are people who are offended enough by the pictures of these women to get all uptight about it. And they are actually describing these women as "obese". Jesus Christ! What kind of body dysmorphia must be afflicting someone to call a size 10 woman obese?


That fat between the ears
July 31, 2005

BY WENDY MCCLURE


Stacy flaunts her hips over a River North parking lot, Gina strikes a teasing pose on a sign on an L platform, all six of the women vamp in a group photo on a billboard. Welcome to Real Woman Summer, folks.

Dove's "Campaign for Real Beauty" is a lot of things: an extremely well-calculated promotion for soap and cosmetic products; an effort to challenge unrealistic media images; a controversy. The Dove ads have (pretty darn deliberately, of course) encouraged plenty of discussion about how women are affected by advertising -- from the pictures of whippet-thin, airbrushed models that supposedly wither our self-esteem to the sort of celebratory photos of ordinary women meant to give us girls the warm fuzzies.

But there's another set of responses we really ought to pay attention to as well -- as crude as they sound, and as much as we'd rather just brush them off as "part of the controversy" or "typical dumb guy talk." Because they're not just dumb, they're unreasonable. And why should we accept them as typical?

Crude comments



Here's what some people (most of them men) think of the Dove ads: "THEY'RE DISGUSTING," reads a post on a popular online bulletin board. The author's opinion expressed entirely in uppercase, is that the Dove women are FAT COWS. The sentiment seems to be shared by the unknown parties who've scrawled graffiti on the women's pictures in New York and slapped stickers with crude slogans over the ads in the United Kingdom.

But a number of the derogatory comments haven't been anonymous at all -- they're coming from the popular media, and not just from the "morning zoo" radio shows or lad mags from which we tend to expect (and laugh off) this kind of frat-boy shtick. No, this stuff is coming from places as mainstream as the Sun-Times and Channel 2 News.

"The only time I want to see a thigh that big is in a bucket with bread crumbs on it," said one Sun-Times reporter, Lucio Guerrero, in a July 19 story about the ads. That same day, columnist Richard Roeper called the Dove models "chunky," and said "If I want to see plump gals baring too much skin, I'll go to Taste of Chicago." Implying, of course, that he'd give those women a thumbs-down rating (and perhaps he thinks he gets to vote with other appendages, too?).

Though the intentions behind Dove campaign's quest to "redefine beauty" aren't exactly pure -- yes, they're selling stuff -- they're fairly high-minded nonetheless, which is why these comments seem to hit so far below the belt.

But these remarks aren't about being politically contrary; they're about something else. They expose the nasty inverse of "the beauty standard," which is the belief, held by some men, that women who don't look like fantasy material aren't just unworthy of their attention but are actually offensive, or even menacing. It's worth noting that none of the complainers goes so far as to call the Dove models ugly, yet they consider these women visual nuisances, annoying as litter, sour eye candy, gross.

It's a dirty little notion, and rarely is it ever this publicly expressed. The sheer entitlement behind it is usually a silent presence, perhaps even an unconscious one. But it's disconcerting when it emerges, when perfectly nice men like Guerrero insist that Dove ditch the Real Women in order to "make [his] morning commute a little more pleasing to the eyes." Even though he's not even the one buying firming cream.

Though these attitudes aren't always explicit, they do take on disingenuous forms at times. The stickers that defaced the ads in England last year (where the Dove campaign first launched) bore admonishing slogans like "FAT ISN'T GLAMOROUS" and "SELLING OBESITY BY THE POUND," as well as more openly mocking ones like "WHO ATE ALL THE PIES?" -- a case of plain ridicule thinly disguised as public service announcement.

And don't think that the genius who scrawled "Type II Diabetes" on one of the ads in Manhattan is ultimately concerned with the health of the woman in the photo. Whoever did it just didn't like the way she looked, wanted to take her down a notch, and did it in the name of "health." The issue isn't fat versus thin -- it's about the sanctimonious criticism of women's bodies, from calling a size 10 woman "obese" to declaring a thin woman "anorexic."

Equally disturbing is the argument in favor of "fantasy women." "Ads should be about the beautiful people," said Guerrero in his July 19 article. "They should include the unrealistic, the ideal or the unattainable look for which so many people strive." They should? Apparently he doesn't get that showing perfect physical specimens isn't the whole point of advertising -- just one of its many techniques.

Fantasy babe delivery



"When we're talking women in their underwear on billboards outside my living room windows, give me the fantasy babes, please," said Roeper in his column. At least he's honest about wanting the ads to fit to his personal taste; never mind that right there in his living room he's likely to have access to several dozen perfectly reliable methods of Fantasy Babe Delivery -- cable TV, DVDs, Internet access, magazines, books, junk e-mails, catalogs. Um, does he need the window, too?

This isn't about whether the Dove women are beautiful or not. We could argue endlessly over whether the women are too fat to be attractive, or not fat enough to be "real," or too airbrushed; whether they're prettier with their clothes on, if the angles of their photos are flattering. But we'd be taking them apart the way we do with so many other women in the media, dissecting them piece by piece. Which gets us nowhere.

And this isn't about whether men's fantasies are unrealistic or stupid or shallow or shameful. Men are certainly entitled to their preferences. Having preferences is one thing; expecting the world to cater to them is another.

Men aren't obligated to consider every woman beautiful, or for that matter, to make every woman feel good about herself.

But by the same token, nobody owes you a nice view, guys.

Wendy McClure is a Chicago writer whose first book, I'm Not the New Me, is a funny memoir on weight and body image. Her web blog is www.poundy.com.
posted by Kim at 8:55 AM on Aug 02 2005


MY COMMENT ON HER BLOG:

Char said...
Oh dear god in heaven. Can you imagine being one of the models and having someone put that on your bill board?

I say that all us girls in double digits start graffiting (is that how you spell that?) up the build boards of all of the "fantasy" models. See how they like that shit for a change.

Oh yes.. I'm going to buy spray paint today and start writing "EAT A FUCKING BISCUIT" on all of the bill boards around town.

I guess I partially can't blame a guy for wanting a 'fantasy woman' on a bill board b/c he's probably sick of the spouse he has at home who's over a size 2 who is sick to death of his non-toned, closed minded, selfish, cheating, mentally abusive, god-complexic, alcoholic ass.

*Wink*

2:12 PM