“When Did You Stop Thinking You’re Handsome?”
by Erica Verbich and Louise Chauvet

The Ad: Dove Camera Shy http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPFsa6FLvlg

We have chosen to subvert the Dove Camera Shy ad. The ad plays to Rose Murphy’s
“Peek-a-Boo” song. In this ad, Dove uses the ‘slice of life’ mechanism. In 45 seconds we
see snippets of 30 different women of a few different races (but mostly white) and ages,
who are hiding behind their hands, pillows, books, etc. once they realize someone is
trying to take a picture of them. The women are all in very natural settings, such as the
home, the workplace, a party or even in their beds, for the natural and slice of life feel. So,
after seeing the array of women being ‘camera shy’, Dove asks: “When did you stop
thinking you’re beautiful?” After this pullout question, there are snippets of little girls for
about 15 seconds. The girls are depicted as content and giggly and are not hiding behind
anything, like the women were. Instead, they are making a show for the camera: dancing,
jumping, hula hopping. The ad ends with another quote, right under the Dove logo. It
reads: “Be your beautiful self.”

To subvert the ad, we will be recreating the ad. Our actors will mirror the actions, the
mood and its intended message but our detournement will be to change the gender of the
characters in the ad. So, we will create a one-minute commercial with men playing the
parts of the characters (i.e. the women) in the Dove commercial.

Outline of paper:
By depicting all men in the same spaces (in a bed, in the kitchen alone which is rarely
seen in advertising), using the same mannerisms and as being “camera shy”, we will be
pointing out the ideologies surrounding gender and the depicted normalized behaviours
for women. Even though Dove is trying to point out that all women are beautiful in their
own ways and shouldn’t be camera shy, their pull-out question insinuates that not being
camera-ready or wanting to smile for a picture means that a women does not believe she
is beautiful (jezebel.com). This is false and places women in a tough spot by basically
telling us that we should be camera ready and happy to smile for the camera, or else that
means we have a bruised self-esteem and don’t believe we are beautiful. So, we want to
hint at what would happen if the gender roles were switched and men would frequently
expected to be the subject of a camera (or of the gaze). To add, by keeping the music, the
settings and the actions, we will be pointing out the naturalized gender stereotypes in the
ad (such as little girls hula-hooping, the woman rolling in her bed with the sun shining,
which is seen in many skin and beauty ads, etc.).
Bibliography
Banet-Weiser, Sarah (2012). “Free Self-Esteem Tools?” Brand Culture, Gender, and the Dove
Real Beauty Campaign.” In Roopali Mukherjee & Sarah Banet-Weiser (Eds.), Commodity
Activism: Cultural Resistance in Neoliberal Times (39-56). New York: NYU Press.
Baker, Katie J.M. “Forever Misguided, Dove Wants to Know Why You’re So Camera Shy.”
Jezebel 3 July 2013.
---. “Here’s Why ‘Real Beauty’ Advertising Campaigns Are Garbage.” 13 May 2013.
Barthes, Roland. (1972). Mythologies. New York: Noonday Press. (MYTH Today to “The
Signification“, 109 – 126)
Heiss, Sarah N. (2011). Locating the Bodies of Women and Disability in Definitions of Beauty:
An Analysis of Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty. Disability Studies Quarterly, 31(1), 1
-12.
Jean Kilbourne, Killing Us Softly 4: Advertising’s Image of Women (2010)
Messner, Michael. A., & Montez de Oca, Jeffrey. (2005). The Male Consumer as Loser: Beer and
Liquor Ads in Mega Sports Media Events. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and
Society, 30, 3, 1879-1909.