Dove has a beauty campaign they are doing to try and help empower women. A video of this on YouTube is of a woman that came in for a photo shoot with no make-up on and her hair not done. They have her stand in front of the camera while they do her hair and make-up to show all the things they do to her to make her look better. They cake on the make-up and put god knows what in her hair. The end product is a pretty girl who kind of doesn't look like herself. They do the photo shoot and finally get a photo they consider to be good. Then they show someone photoshoping the image. They make her neck longer, her eyes bigger, her cheek bones more prominent, and several other small things. By the end of this the image of the girl on the billboard looks nothing like the naturally beautiful woman that first came in for the photo shoot. What I want to know is why they thought all those things had to be done to make the girl prettier. Why make her eyes huge and her neck that off a giraffes? Did all that really make her more desirable? To some maybe it did, but to me I think she was pretty before all that. I wouldn't have known the difference in beauty if they didn't do those things to her.
You raise many thought provoking ideas throughout your post. The caked on make up and the photo-shopped face transform a women who was already pretty into the distorted image of perfection the beauty industry sells off as beauty. One has to ask themselves, why do they do this? Why cake on makeup and photo shop? Now, I am completely against the whole charade that perfection equals beauty, but sometimes I think is it completely their fault? The media/ beauty industry wouldn't have to put up the fake front if the public didn't follow and even chase after the beauty they "photograph." So, who instigated the problem? The beauty industry, the media, the public, or all of the above?
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