A Campaign for Beauty

The following video was created for the "Dove Campaign for Real Beauty"





The first image that was shown in the commercial was of a little girl, who almost mesmerizes you and pulls you into the commercial. Then suddenly, I was taken aback as the video sucked me in even more as a plethora of images appeared on the screen. The images included billboards displaying half naked women, panties, then a video of two women who were almost baring it all were lustfully dancing and shaking their hips. The most disturbing portion of the commercial for me was the clips of women getting “under the knife”. Watching this part of the commercial was almost like watching a car crash, because no matter how horrific it was I couldn’t seem to take my eyes off of the screen. I felt as if the commercial itself was encompassing me, sucking me into it, just like how the beauty industry is almost suffocating and grabbing us into their world. Actually seeing all of these images put together almost sickened me to see women doing those horrendous to their body to look “beautiful”. However what is even more disturbing is the harsh reality that so many women today do all of those things.
I believe that the central message behind this commercial was for people to recognize the effects that the media and beauty industry have on society, specifically the youth. Because the media imposes images of beauty to be skinny, sensual, perfect complexion and skin, society, especially young women do drastic things in order to attain these things. As shown in the commercial, people would resort to using weight loss pills, plastic surgery, not eating, and forcing themselves to regurgitate. All of these things just show the overwhelming influence and power that the beauty industry has. It is becoming more common for younger girls to be sucked into this world and for them to be doing all of those horrible things. Young girls are the most vulnerable, therefore the most likely to believe what the media is projecting, and to believe that “beautiful” means having a slim figure with enhanced body parts. The video is literally making a plea to the audience. A plea to stop the “onslaught” or attack of the beauty industry on the youth and on society. To be able to help fight for this, we as a society must take it upon ourselves to be aware of our surroundings and to change our perspective of what beauty is and hopefully reestablish its true meaning.