Analysis #6 [Final]

Analysis 5/6
For this final analysis I want to focus on feminism, predominately the author Susan Bordo and her work. I am going to examine the YouTube clip called the Dove campaign. This commercial exemplifies what goes into creating the advertisements that we see every day of perfect looking women; it aims to unveil the truth about marketing campaigns and how unrealistic the images that we are surrounded by everyday are.
I want to explain this video in terms of Susan Bordo’s work Unbearable Weight. In this work Bordo explains that the body essentially is a spectacle. She writes, “The body—what we eat, how we dress, the daily rituals through which we attend to the body—is a medium of culture” (2240). This quote explains exactly what this campaign is trying to point out. As we see from the dramatic transformation of this model into the image that is portrayed on the billboard. This young girl in the video undergoes a complete overhaul; she is not even herself at the end of it. Additionally, as we saw in the presentation yesterday on feminism from the slideshow that nearly everyone in the media spotlight has their body image distorted.
Bordo also says, “Through the exacting and normalizing disciplines of diet, makeup, and dress—central organizing principles of time and space in the day of many women—we are rendered less socially oriented and more centripetally focused on self-modification” (2241). IN this quote Bordo suggests a reason for which women adhere to these extreme diet and exercise regimens or resort to means such as bulimia and anorexia in order to lose weight. By being surrounded by images of perfectly skinny women daily women are desensitized to them, many young girls believe it is possible to look this way. When the reality of it is, that in order to be that skinny more often than not one must be photo shopped or altered in some way.
Like Bordo is exemplifying in this quote, this video clip is trying to show how unreal these ideal body images are. By showing everything that goes into making any advertisement it is creating a real life behind the scenes of an advertisement. Dove takes us behind the scenes to help us to uncover the truth. By grouping together the work of Bordo and also using this Dove campaign as visual proof we can see the effects the media has on body image. By creating more commercials and organizations such as this one we can hope for a society that is less centered on the female’s appearance. That a woman can be recognized for who she is not compared to the societal ideal exemplified in advertisements.
Works Cited
Bordo, Susan. Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body. “The Body and the Reproduction of Femininity.” The Norton Anthology of Critical Theory & Criticism 2nd Edition. Ed. Vincent B. Leitch. New York: W. W. Norton & Company Inc., 2010. 2240-2254.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYhCn0jf46U