Thursday, March 01, 2007

Inner Beauty & a look at Dove's Beauty, Aging & Self-esteem campaigns


I have always felt that true beauty comes from within and that we all change and age over time. This true beauty is best captured candidly and naturally. This is one of the reasons that I feel so privileged to be a photographer who documents special events as they unfold. We all have unique life experiences and stories. I've always been drawn to people as a subject matter. I truly enjoy capturing one's personality on film, and now digitally-- so one's loved ones, historians and all of us can cherish. Isn't it remarkable how most people can be moved by a spectacularly photographed emotional event of a child, wedding couple, and so on. It involves the human element, it involves people's inner beauty coming through the protective shells that we learn to create! I enjoy capturing those special moments!
Dove's Real Beauty Ad campaign(s) illustrates this marvelously. I just came across a neat little video about the Evolution of Beauty.
This covers the distorted "myth" of shallow unrealistic "beauty." Dove created it to explain "All this talk about fashion models and extreme dieting. How did our idea of beauty become so distorted?" It actually can be argued that this "Beauty" is not beauty, but fashion that comes and goes with the times-- a 1950s model is so very different from one today by these false standards.

I hope you enjoy the clip as much as I did. It is part of their Campaign for Real Beauty.

Dove answers "Why the Campaign for Real Beauty?
For too long, beauty has been defined by narrow, stifling stereotypes. Women have told us it's time to change all that. Dove agrees. We believe real beauty comes in many shapes, sizes and ages. That is why Dove is launching the Campaign for Real Beauty."

Other campaigns they have following the same theme deal with girls and low self-esteem.


(This low self-esteem True Colors ad with the multiple girls by far, is my favorite commercial in the campaign to date.)

Their most recent campaign deals with the slightly older group:


This is their anti-anti-aging Ad campaign

where they feature "real" aging 50+ & 60+ women in the campaign. Interestingly enough, it was banned in the US for showing too much skin.

Information on all of the campaigns can be found at www.campaignforrealbeauty.com/ and selecting Canada (English) from the drop down menu.