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Jennifer Tappa
English 150
Dr. G. Christopher Williams
19 December 2006
Final Draft
Whatever the culture, status, or age, women want to be beautiful. This applies to how
women view themselves as much as to how society views them. While philosophers and fairy
tales warn that beauty lies within, most of the time an individual will use physical standards to
evaluate beauty. According to Cathy Newman in her article “The Enigma of Beauty,” studies
have shown that “attractive people make more money, get called on more often in class, receive
lighter court sentences, and are perceived as friendlier.” Thus, the quest for a more beautiful
form is not only understandable, but is promoted through a variety of advertisements nationwide.
Yet, due to the impact of recent advertisements, our definition of beauty is changing. Dove’s
Campaign for Real Beauty has been hailed for its efforts to broaden the beauty spectrum by
including “real women” in their advertisements rather than the dolled up models represented in
advertisements from companies such as Maybelline New York. However, as pointed out by
Omomah Ilamosi Abebe in his essay “Cultural Difference: Its Effect on the Perceptions of
Beauty and Initial Relations between African and African American Women,” models “represent
the epitome of beauty” for a particular culture. And, as shown by Gillian Rhodes in her essay
“The Evolutionary Psychology of Facial Beauty,” attractive forms signal health and mate quality
(199). Thus, models are representative of our highest standards of health in tandem with beauty.
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Therefore, by using unretouched women to redefine the beauty standard, Dove may actually be
lowering our standards for both beauty and health.
Both Maybelline and Dove use advertisements that must assure the customer that they
will be more beautiful through using their respective products. However, they go about
promoting their merchandise in different ways. In Maybelline’s “Company History: Today”
article, the company boasts that its message “is all about color, style, and innovation.” This is
exemplified by their advertisement for “Intense XXL Volume + Length Microfiber Mascara,”
where a young model is shown holding a horizontally striped black and white shirt around her
head. As such, her face is only visible from her eyes up, where the dramatic effect of the deep
black mascara is clearly visible. To complement the white stripes on her shirt, a white eye
shadow has also been applied, underscoring the mascara to give her a bold, stylish look.
Alternatively, upon visiting Dove’s “Campaign for Real Beauty” website, a short film,
“Evolution,” reveals Dove’s campaign mantra that “every girl deserves to feel beautiful just the
way she is.” The film shows a model during a photo shoot getting a heavy makeup and
airbrushing job in order to fit the criteria for beauty. This video sends the message that natural
beauty, beauty achieved without the use of cosmetics, is better than its antithesis, artificial
beauty, and that the artificial beauty represented by models diminishes the confidence of women
by telling them that they must change their appearance in order to be beautiful.
While Dove’s campaign is commendable for its efforts to raise the self-esteem of girls
and women, it is questionable as to whether their redefinition of beauty is accurate. Due to the
value-bound nature of beauty, finding a reliable definition for beauty to use as a standard for
comparison is elusive, without first setting down the qualification that it must be termed in the
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physical sense. Furthermore, while certain cultural practices and values may appear to alter
perceptions of beauty, Abebe points out that cultural ethnocentricities arise primarily due to
“stereotypes and personal ideologies of what constitutes beauty and womanhood in their
respective cultures.” Overall, as Rhodes notes, “people in different cultures generally agree on
which faces are attractive” (200). Thus, an evolutionary perspective can be taken in defining
beauty universally and without cultural or moral bias. Rhodes focuses her argument on the
evolutionary basis for beauty, dissecting those characteristics that define beauty across cultural
divides: bilateral symmetry, average features, and sexual dimorphism. She notes that bilateral
symmetry and averageness are signals of health, and that although the preference for feminine
characteristics in female faces, such as full lips and a smaller jaw, shows no correlation with
health, it is preferred as a signal for fertility (216). Newman cites Don Symons, an
anthropologist at the University of California at Santa Barbara, making a similar remark:
“smooth skin, big eyes, curvaceous bodies, and full lips…are reliable cues to youth, good health,
and fertility.” Thus, possessing attractive features ties into the ultimate goal of beauty as it
relates to evolution: reproductive success.
Yet women entering their fifties have little chance of conceiving a child, and are equally
as concerned about their appearance as any other category of woman. Newman quotes an eightyear old Shirley Temple in asking “Suppose I’m not so cute when I grow up as I am now?”
Similar insecurities about social acceptance and competition lead many women toward
cosmetics, not to look available, but to look genuinely youthful and energetic. It is this energy of
youth that is sought after in the workplace, especially in competitive business settings. BBC
columnist Jenny Matthews quotes Simon Withey of the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic
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Surgeons giving his understanding of the social pressures to look younger: “we get quite a lot of
people who are in the media or very competitive jobs in the City, and they just feel as soon as
they look a bit tired, that these…younger women are snapping at their heels, trying to chase them
out of their jobs.” Thus, cosmetics are an issue of competitive acceptance for many women as
much as they are an issue of beauty. After all, nobody likes to feel old and useless, and in the
competitive realm of work, how a woman looks is often how she is perceived by her colleagues.
This is where cosmetic surgeries and makeup takes hold in restoring the look and feel of youth.
Older women may be just as energetic as younger women, but as Newman notes “the face in the
mirror does not always reflect how old or young we feel.” Moreover, younger people are
generally healthier than older people, hence the increase in energy. Once again, cosmetics prove
to be a means of altering the appearance and perception of health, even if reproductive
capabilities are null.
As previously mentioned, models represent society’s highest standards for beauty. And if
beauty is health, then it can be assumed that models would be extremely healthy as well.
Unfortunately, this is not always the case. According to the recent CBS News article “Thin
Supermodels Face British Backlash,” “the average runway model at [a height of five-foot-nine]
is 115 pounds,” putting them over ten pounds underweight. These drastically underweight
models are no more healthy or beautiful than those women who are obese. The beauty industry
has taken note of this, however, and the previously mentioned CBS News article reported that
recently “Madrid's Fashion Week, the Pasarela Cibeles, announced it was banning models with a
Body Mass Index, or height to weight ratio, below 18,” with organizers saying that they want to
project “an image of beauty and health.” While this BMI is still slightly underweight, it is a step
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in the right direction. Yet according to Newman, in “studies by psychologist Devendra Singh at
the University of Texas, [men] show a preference for the classic hourglass-shaped body.” Such
desires for curvaceous, voluptuous women materialize in the highest end of the beauty industry,
as supermodels such as Heidi Klum and Cindy Crawford. These are the supermodels who
actually represent our highest standards for beauty, and are paid to match that standard, rather
than the deathly thin girls on the catwalk. Evolutionarily speaking, this makes sense, as being
too thin inhibits reproductive capabilities, for those young enough to have them.
It cannot be denied, however, that Americans do prefer slim waists. What is considered a
healthy weight for an individual lies within a range of up to forty pounds, yet Americans
typically see beauty at the smaller end of the scale. This may not have as much to do with the
influence of models on women’s self-perceptions as it does for sheer health purposes. In
Christina Hoff Sommers’ screed, Who Stole Feminism? How Women Have Betrayed Women,
Sommers notes the somewhat obvious fact that those suffering from obesity “are threatened by
diseases that do not affect people who are fit” (234). From this, it can be reasonably said that
weight loss trends are healthy for our society, particularly with America consistently topping the
list of most obese nations. This does not justify anorexia, or Newman’s claim that a 1997
magazine survey showed that “15 percent of women…sampled said [they would] sacrifice more
than five years of their life to be at their ideal weight.” It does, however, shed light that the
primary reason people will diet and exercise is not for beauty alone, but for health.
Dove’s definition of beauty relies on the premise that beauty is health, keeping in line
with the evolutionary definition and featuring physically fit, curvaceous women in their
advertisements rather than traditional models. Dove’s redefinition falters in assuming that the
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use of makeup is a pretense to a woman’s diminishing pride in her natural beauty. This does not
hold true. In fact, makeup helps women to express and further accentuate that beauty which they
already have. And if makeup optimizes beauty, then it is really enhancing the appearance of
health. Even if this is a fictitious representation of health, cosmetics still aid in confidence as
well as in achieving the aforementioned reproductive goal of beauty for younger clientele. And
if a woman is to measure her pride by her appearance, as the Dove advertisements also assume
and even promote, then the use of cosmetics to create a more radiant vision of beauty does not
diminish, but strengthens, a woman’s pride in herself.
Maybelline, on the other hand, gives a more honest interpretation of cosmetics.
Maybelline challenges women to improve upon themselves, by using models to set a standard for
beauty most women realize is absurd. However, boldness and style is the primary message their
advertisements send. This cements confidence as the goal of cosmetics. So in using an
outrageously unrealistic standard for beauty, Maybelline sends the message that their customers
can gain confidence and an innovative edge along with beauty by applying these cosmetics,
without expecting to look like the girl in the advertisement. By applying the Intense XXL
Volume + Length Microfiber Mascara, for example, a woman does not necessarily expect to
grow more eyelashes. She may, however, feel better with the illusion that she has more.
It has been argued that women are negatively affected by models, their beauty instigating
a score of horrors including eating disorders and negative self-esteem, and that those perceptions
are what causes women to buy cosmetics. Dove latches onto that common assumption with their
advertising technique, ironically placing women as the victims of the beauty industry’s
perpetually raised standards for beauty. However, the correlation between models causing
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negative self-perceptions amongst the masses does not hold true. Sommers cites a 1983 study
done by Thomas Cash and associates at Old Dominion University. In the experiment, women
were split up into three groups, each of which were asked to evaluate themselves after viewing
photographs of different categories of women: one group viewed photographs of fashion
models, another group viewed photographs of unattractive peers, and the third group viewed
photographs of attractive peers. The results indicated that women are less negatively swayed by
models as they are by their peers (233). From a competitive standpoint, it makes sense that a
woman would compare herself to her peers rather than to models. The average athlete would not
expect to win in a race with an Olympian, but she may be able to win a race against her friends.
This revelation explains a lot about Dove’s marketing strategy, as well as of that
employed by Maybelline. By showing their customers ordinary women and proclaiming them as
beautiful, Dove may expect the audience to subconsciously compare themselves to these women
and buy Dove products simply out of the nature of competition. That they are sending the sweet
notion of being perfect “just the way you are” is simply icing on the cake. This way, Dove not
only targets models, whom many women already blame for their insecurities, but also charms the
consumer while inciting them to buy Dove products through competition. Maybelline’s tactic,
on the other hand, leaves the model as a canvas on which to improve upon. So, rather than
promoting competition, Maybelline promotes innovation. In fact, an interesting point in
reference to Cash’s study is that if women do see themselves more negatively when viewing
attractive peers, like those in the Dove advertisements, then Dove may actually be decreasing the
confidence of women more than Maybelline does in telling women to change their appearance.
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As cosmetics are enhancing the appearance of health, it is evolutionarily advantageous to
use makeup, making Dove’s argument against it unsubstantiated. Moreover, makeup is not
necessarily intended as a mask, but as a method of reinventing oneself. As Newman writes,
“humanity revels in the chance to shed its everyday skin and masquerade as a more powerful,
romantic, or sexy being.” Consider the appeal of movies, books, or videogames: the opportunity
to forget about the world and immerse oneself in a role or experience without personal
consequence. Cosmetics allow women to recreate themselves in a similar way, as long as they
remember not to take the quest for beauty too seriously. However, while at first glance Dove’s
tactic appears merely to lower the beauty standard, it is actually remarkably efficient in
comparison to the Maybelline advertisements in marketing competition with regards to physical
betterment, which may prove to be beneficial to society, assuming those competing remain
within healthy guidelines. Thus, the primary flaw with Dove’s tactic is not in the strategy itself,
but in their criticism of cosmetics.
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Works Cited
Abebe, Omomah Ilamosi. “Cultural Difference: Its Effect on the Perceptions of Beauty
and Initial Relations between African and African American Women.”
The Berkeley McNair Research Journal. 11 (2003). 13 November 2006.
<http://www-mcnair.berkeley.edu/2003journal/default.html>
“Company History: Today.” Maybelline New York. 3 December 2006.
<www.maybelline.com>
“Evolution.” Dove. 28 November 2006. <http://www.campaignforrealbeauty.com>
Hoff Sommers, Christina. Who Stole Feminism?: How Women Have Betrayed Women.
New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994.
“Intense XXL Volume + Length Microfiber Mascara.” Maybelline New York.
2 December 2006. <www.maybelline.com>
Matthews, Jenny. “Who will be beautiful in the future?” BBC News. 1 December 2006.
15 December 2006. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/>
Newman, Cathy. “The Enigma of Beauty.” National Geographic. January 2000.
18 November 2006. <http://www.nationalgeographic.com/>
Rhodes, Gillian. “The Evolutionary Psychology of Facial Beauty.”
Annual Review of Psychology; 57.1 (2006): 199-226. EBSCO Host.
7 November 2006. <http://web.ebscohost.com/>
“Thin Supermodels Face British Backlash.” CBS News. 16 September 2006
3 December 2006. <http://www.cbsnews.com/>