{"id":1790,"date":"2005-08-22T00:01:54","date_gmt":"2005-08-22T07:01:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2005\/08\/20\/on-that-dove-soup-campaign\/"},"modified":"2005-08-22T00:01:54","modified_gmt":"2005-08-22T07:01:54","slug":"on-that-dove-soup-campaign","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=1790","title":{"rendered":"On that Dove Ad Campaign and Unruly Fat"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mind the Gap<\/a> is one of my favorite new feminist blogs (new to me, at least!). Check out Winter Woods’ post on the Dove Beauty Campaign<\/a>:<\/p>\n

But at the risk of sounding like a humourless, spoil sport, never satisfied feminist I’m now going to come out and say “I’m not happy.”\u009d What’s not to like? Well I don’t like the fact that the empowerment is very little, very late, and I don’t like the questions about my own feminist thinking which this campaign raises. What really bothers me is not <\/em>the fact that the Dove campaign is not radical, it is the frightening probability that, in the context of our current culture, this campaign is extremely <\/em>radical. As feminists, this is what we should be worried about.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Exactly. (There’s lots, lots more to Winter’s post; you should read the whole thing<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

Let’s not forget how very little Dove is giving us. All the women in the Dove ads are conventionally attractive; all of them are below the average dress size<\/a> of American women. No one in Dove-land is fat, no one in Dove-land is disabled, and no one in Dove-land has any wrinkles. It’s as if a prisoner was allowed out of her cell and into the prison yard. Well, yes, after a long confinement to a tiny cell, the “freedom” of an exercise yard might seem something to celebrate; but let’s not forget that she’s still in a prison.<\/p>\n

The essential purpose of Dove’s campaign is the same as all ad campaigns for beauty or diet products: to make money by convincing people that they are unattractive and insufficient the way they really are. In Dove’s case, what’s being sold is “firming cream,” which as Lindsey at Majikthise points out, is just another word for snake oil<\/a>. So Dove is trying to exploit women’s insecurities to convince them to waste money on products that don’t even work, but because they’re using models who are not actually anorexics<\/em>, we’re supposed to see this as a feminist victory?<\/p>\n

Winter Woods is right – if that’s radical, then we’re in deep trouble.<\/p>\n

As a fat activist, I’m struck by how much the Dove ads – and also Nike’s recent bandwagoning ads<\/a> – are less about body acceptance than about setting a boundary between acceptable and unacceptable weight. It’s okay to be bigger than a bundle of sticks, the ads tell us, so long as you’re firm. So long as your fat isn’t, you know, jiggly<\/em>. Keep it in control, and you can keep those thunder thighs. Nike’s “my butt” ad features a picture of a butt that you could bounce a roll of quarters off of, with text that says:<\/p>\n

My butt is big
\nAnd round like the letter C
\nAnd ten thousand lunges
\nHave made it rounder
\nBut not smaller.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Ten thousand <\/em>lunges! It’s under control, see. No loose, unruly fat running around here, no sir.<\/p>\n

Similarly, Nike’s “Thunder Thighs” ad<\/a> is sure to tell us that the thighs in question aren’t just large; they are “toned” and “muscular.” Not fat<\/em>, that’s for damn sure.<\/p>\n

These ads aren’t about body acceptance, so much as they’re about regulating the borders of what bodies are and are not acceptable. You will never see a body that is soft, or that has ever jiggled, in a Dove or Nike ad. We’ve been let out of the cell, but we’re still in the prison.<\/p>\n

POSTSCRIPT<\/strong>: You must see the “repair work”<\/a> some kick-ass anonymous artist did on the most offensive of Dove’s ads. Via Big Fat Blog<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mind the Gap is one of my favorite new feminist blogs (new to me, at least!). Check out Winter Woods’ post on the Dove Beauty Campaign: But at the risk of sounding like a humourless, spoil sport, never satisfied feminist … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,31,54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1790","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fat-fat-and-more-fat","category-feminism-sexism-etc","category-media-criticism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1790","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1790"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1790\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1790"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1790"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1790"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}