Jon Hanson has written an excellent takedown of the
"Dove Campaign for Real Beauty".
http://thesituationist.wordpress.com/20 ... ur-parent/
Here are a few excerpts:
But is talking "to your daughter before the beautySeveral weeks ago, as part of its much lauded
“Dove Campaign for Real Beauty,” Unilever released
“Onslaught,” a video (above) examining disturbing
images of women in beauty-industry advertising.
The video ends with this admonition to parents:
“Talk to your daughter before the beauty industry does.”
industry does” an effective solution?
It seems peculiar, therefore, that Dove would
offer a film demonstrating the ubiquitous attack
of the beauty industry that ends with the suggestion
to parents that they are the ones to make a difference
by simply talking to their kids. If the industry is
the problem, it strikes me as odd that the parents
are supposed to be the solution.
Hanson, makes a very interesting point, about
parallels with Philip Morris ad campaigns.
Telling parents to talk to their children is not
unusual as a public relations Philip Morris Talk
to your Kids; They’ll Listen strategy. For instance,
Philip Morris, among other companies, has long been
pushing that message in its “public service” ads,
particularly since the industry began to face a
real threat of tort liability in the 1990s. The
message seems public-spirited, but most industry
analysts believe that Philip Morris is delivering,
not a public-service message to parents, but a
responsibility-shifting message to the public:
kids smoke because of uninvolved or irresponsible
parents, not because of anything that Philip Morris
has done.
This has been a long-time pet peeve of mine. Whatever
the negative messages of TV (or the media in general),
the solution that is inevitably trotted out, is that
“parents should just talk to their kids”.
There is some evidence that parents talking to their
kids about what they see on TV does have a small
ameliorative effect. But there is no evidence that
such talk eliminates the many negative effects
of TV.
Plus, watching a lot of TV with your kids and then
continuously lecturing them the negative effects
of the media seems like a case of mixed signals.
Kind of like serving burgers and doughnuts for
dinner (night after night), while at the same time
lecturing on the importance of healthy meals.
A simpler, and more effective solution is to just
turn-off the TV. For some reason this solution is
rarely mentioned.
See:
"Desperate Housewives and other TV soap operas may help make
adolescent girls desperate for a thinness few can healthily
achieve, new Australian research suggests."
http://www.lifeclinic.com/fullpage.aspx ... 142&type=1
"A report of the American Psychological Association (APA)
released today found evidence that the proliferation of sexualized
images of girls and young women in advertising, merchandising,
and media is harmful to girls' self-image and healthy development."
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 005051.htm
Study Finds TV Alters Fiji Girls' View of Body
http://www.nytimes.com/1999/05/20/world ... sec=health