What’s not so great about that Dove video April 18, 2013

For starters…

When it comes to the diversity of the main participants: all four are Caucasian, three are blonde with blue eyes, all are thin, and all are young (the oldest appears to be 40). The majority of the non-featured participants are thin, young white women as well. Hmm… probably a little limiting, wouldn’t you say? We see in the video that at least three black women were in fact drawn for the project. Two are briefly shown describing themselves in a negative light (one says she has a fat, round face, and one says she’s getting freckles as she ages). Both women are lighter skinned. A black man is shown as one of the people describing someone else, and he comments that she has “pretty blue eyes”. One Asian woman is briefly shown looking at the completed drawings of herself and you see the back of a black woman’s head; neither are shown speaking. Out of 6:36 minutes of footage, people of color are onscreen for less than 10 seconds.

Then there’s this…

At the end of the experiment, one of the featured participants shares what I find to be the most disturbing quote in the video and what Dove seems to think is the moral of the story as she reflects upon what she’s learned, and how problematic it is that she hasn’t been acknowledging her physical beauty: It’s troubling,” she says as uplifting music swells in the background. “I should be more grateful of my natural beauty. It impacts the choices and the friends we make, the jobs we go out for, they way we treat our children, it impacts everything. It couldn’t be more critical to your happiness.”

Read all about it here.

(Thanks, R!)

“Women, sort yourselves out!” March 11, 2013

Thanks, L!

Weddings and sentiments about same sex marriages unveiled February 19, 2013

Wedding photographer Anne Almasy submitted an ad to Weddings Unveiled and it got rejected.

The reason it got rejected was because Anne chose a picture of a same sex couple in her ad.

She wrote a letter to the editors and posted it on her blog (here) and this post went a bit viral and I wanted to write about it, and now that I have time to do that, I found that there’s an update!

Weddings Unveiled apologised on their blog (here) and will publish the advertisement after all. Jolly good.

I was surprised to read in the comments that people thought the picture was selected because of shock value.

Liposuction and student health (!!$%@&?) February 9, 2013

Here’s an ad that ran in the most recent issue of “The Bucknellian” — the college newspaper at Bucknell University.  It invites college students to “get rid of the areas that make [them] crazy” at Geisinger Hospital.  What’s worse? Geisinger runs Bucknell University’s student health services.  So, as one of our readers puts it, “this is a case of a hospital charged with guarding the health of students promoting to those same students liposuction.”  Faculty, staff, and some students are outraged.  Isn’t anybody in Geisinger’s marketing department thinking?  How about the student staff at the Bucknellian?  Or whomever oversees the staff, assuming some faculty or staff member(s) does?  If you’re moved to speak out: Bucknellian at (570) 577-1085;  Geisinger Center for Aesthetics and Cosmetic Surgery at (855) 872-0448. (Thanks, G!)

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