REDEFINING
BEAUTY
AP PHOTO/NAM Y. HUH
my body shape and size at all,”
Crisanti told NBC News in 2005.
“I hated being curvy. I hated having big breasts. And I hated having
curly hair. In my 20s, I realized all
those [ideas] were simply self-destructive. Once I started to develop
an alternative definition of beauty,
all of it started to fall into place.”
According to Kilbourne, who
has studied advertising since the
‘70s, Dove was — and still is —
one of the only mainstream advertisers talking about how we define
female beauty.
“There are so few commercials
that in any way are different, that
challenge the stereotypical images,” she told HuffPost.
Some other brands have followed suit, capitalizing on the
association of their products with
a message of female empowerment. Commercials like Pantene’s
“Labels Against Women” draw on
themes similar to the Campaign
for Real Beauty’s, like the snap
judgments people make based on
a woman’s looks — and why that
shouldn’t matter.
Moving Beyond ‘Rebranding’
Knowing that the campaign would
be criticized as a shallow marketing ploy, the team behind the
HUFFINGTON
02.09.14
“I grew up not being happy
with my body shape and size
at all. I hated being curvy.
I hated having big breasts.
And I hated having curly hair.”
Campaign for Real Beauty concluded that simply talking about
these issues wasn’t enough.
“[We were thinking], we have
to walk the talk,” Sharon MacLeod, vice president of Unilever
North America Personal Care, told
Gina Crisanti
stands next
to a billboard
image of
herself, which
was part of
a Dove ad
campaign,
in 2005.