The Figure in Advertising: Dove’s Real Beauty
In our series The Figure in Advertising, we pay attention to those who are currently using the figure in new and interesting ways. With so many interesting uses of the figure occurring in advertising today TGN felt it necessary to take a look at uses of the figure in the recent past.
One of the first to come to mind is Dove in their Real Beauty Campaign. A direct attack on the distorted perceptions of beauty in advertising, Dove’s approach was to use the realism of everyday people to create art over advertising. They photographed and advertised numerous women fully nude, showing what they believed ‘real’ women to look like. Dove also launched a video, showing the process of remodeling that a person goes through on a photo-shoot. They then created a billboard for foundation makeup ‘Fasel,’ being an anagram for ‘False.’ The end product helped to show how the divinity of the human form stretches further than what we see on magazine pages.
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Dove's signature ad from their first "Real Beauty" campaign
One of Dove's groundbreaking choices of model
carlos Said,
October 30, 2009 @ 6:48 am
she is a beautiful lady and she is real, this are the women in are society, magazine, TV. etc they portrait model skinny almost anorexic, which there is no beauty on them and they not real,in are society there are different figure and ages, well done girl
Jeff Wiener Said,
November 6, 2009 @ 12:42 pm
Yes Carlos, all of these models are beautiful, and I think that’s what holds this series together. All of the Advertisements featuring nude models are focused on projecting universal ideals of human beauty, as opposed to a vision of beautiful that is fashionable, which eventually passes with time. We always come back to the universal truths, and these advertisements stand out for us for that reason.