When we as an industry set out to create a beautiful ad, we tend to sometimes let our creativity and this thing called Photoshop run amock. Clearly demonstrating this penchant and fixation for beautifying everything in our path is this Dove commercial – created by Ogilvy Toronto and produced by Reginald Pike – in which an average looking woman is, first, subjected to intense physical makeover and then intense digital makeover turning her into the very familiar but very unreal woman we see gracing the pages of magazines and as subject matter for our advertising.
Is this wrong? Are we devaluing the appreciation of human beings by turning them into beautiful but freakishly unreal versions of themselves? Do we as an industry owe it to society to stop perpetuating the myth of beauty and its seeming importance over every other human attribute? The answers are unclear and likely answerable only in a fashion similar to that of abortion: individually and with respect to a person’s individual situation. We, of course, are not, by far, the only industry that does this. Fashion and Hollywood play their part as well.
While there may never be a clear cut answer to these questions, in one sense, it nets out to the importance of reflecting reality versus the importance of presenting something, however unreal and unattainable, toward which people can reach. Dove thinks there’s too much effort expended on the unattainable reach side of the spectrum and has been illustrating that notion in it’s ad campaigns lately. To all of those in this industry, have we gone to far? Have we forever warped reality into some freakishly fake, unattainable entity? Are e simply painting optimistic imagery towards which people can reach? Are we causing the problem or are we reflecting societies problems? Should we do anything about it? can we do anything about it?
