I first want to address Dove's version of subvertizing, in the greater context of what we are studying, because it is actually very relevant in more than one way. Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty, launched in 2004, produced images that empowered women, and celebrated the “flaws” that make each of us uniquely beautiful. The models were relate-able and imperfect, but they beamed happiness and confidence from their self-acceptance. I really admired this ad campaign when it came out, but I have some reservations; Dove is still owned by Unilever, a huge corporation that also owns Axe. Unilever utilizes "idealized" female sexuality to market AXE products towards young men. It also produces Fair and Lovely, a skin-lightening product marketed at dark-skinned women in several countries. It makes me question the sincerity of the Dove message and seems to reveal to me the cynicism of their marketing. It’s really just another gimmick, commodifying an important concept as a means of selling soap and lotion. There have been some murmurs that these “real” models were just as retouched as normal models. One photographer said that it was simply a different kind of retouching: that preserving their “realness” while still making them attractive is harder than just slicing and dicing.






When I thought about an anti-advertising solution to the oppression proliferated in mainstream images, I decided that subvertizing actually could be a viable, realistic and effective solution. Advertising “tells us who we are and who we should be.”(1) It imparts values, concepts of success and self-worth, love and sexuality, and normalcy. Subvertizing uses the same motivational appeal as commercial advertising. (3) Since the public has been so effectively conditioned to internalize and self-actualize these messages, theoretically, they would be receptive to news messages in the same format, right? I propose releasing public service announcements which would remind consumers that the ideal results being presented to them in ads are just that: idealized and manipulated images rather than any kind of achievable reality. These would essentially be advocacy advertisements, which would attempt to challenge conventional wisdom and present alternative interpretations of social problems and political issues. (3) In this case, the sexism, racism and power hierarchies found in mainstream media images would be targeted. Aligned with Douglas Kellner’s proposal, “The goal will be to teach a critical media literacy which will empower individuals to become autonomous agents, able to emancipate themselves from contemporary forms of domination and able to become more active citizens…”

Hopefully, they could mimic the success of the Truth campaign, and example of advocacy advertising intended to prevent teen smoking pioneered in my home state, Florida. The Truth ad campaign was interesting in that it branded itself much in the same way tobacco companies established brand recognition among youth. It directed teens to rebel against the tobacco industry, and was careful not to preach nor condemn smokers. It had some key messages:
-cigarette compnies lie, denying that cigarettes cause devastating diseases
-not smoking is a way to express independence
-deconstruct the “cool”, cultural cache of smoking
-influence intention to smoke, and reduce its prevalence
Truth was highly successful, 75% of all youth (ages 12-17) could accurately describe at least one Truth ad, and changed youth intentions to smoke: youth with confirmed awareness of Truth were 66% more likely to say they would not smoke in the coming year. Current smoking among students declined from 25.3% to 18% between 1999 and 2002. Crunching a few more stats, shows that Truth accounted for 22% of decline in youth smoking.
(All data here is sourced from "Evaluating the Truth Campaign" by Donna Vallone PhD MPH, Associate Vice Pres. Of Research & Evaluation, American Legacy Foundation. )

So anyway, PSAs that deconstruct idealized femininity (passive, superficial, removed from agency over their own bodies) and attempt to humanize these images will hopefully encourage humanizing women in society. De-objectifying women, and targeting young, impressionable consumers could be effective in at least shifting the cultural attention to discussion of overall media portrayal of women.

Another tactic could be passing legislation that requires advertisers to label digitally “enhanced” images. Legislation has been seriously considered in European countries like the U.K., France and Norway. Hopefully advertisers will voluntarily use more relate-able, honest images to avoid the warning label. I want to agree with, but not reiterate entirely, the last paragraph of Reading Images Critically (pg 131) which suggests reforming corporate business laws about taxing and writing off advertisements as a business expense, “given the dubious impact of advertising on U.S. society and the massive waste of resources, talent, and human energies.”

Advertising is the foundation and economic lifeblood of the mass media. The primary purpose of the mass media is to deliver an audience to advertisers. (1) Therefore, in respect to Gloria Steinem's and Ms. Magazine’s trouble with advertisers’ objections to their articles (that do not promote products to readers): some kind of incentive should be introduced to mainstream lifestyle magazines to publish less vacuous and consumerist content. What that incentive would be, I honestly don’t know.


These ads don't directly relate to the topic at hand, but considering that children begin being gender socialized at such a young age, these ads feel very refreshing and actually are really cool:





Gender neutral, racially inclusive, normative images seem like a long way away, but it all has to start somewhere. Allowing alternative images to infiltrate and add diversity to mainstream images can dismantle the destructive hierarchies they impose, and advertising's mechanism of socialization can at least contribute to values and concepts about beauty, love, sexuality, success, popularity and normalcy--changing them to be more congruent with reality and more inclusive to all.

I want to see more images like these:






SOURCES:
1) Kilbourne, Jean “Beauty and the Beast of Advertising
2) Kellner, Douglas “Reading Images Critically: Towards a Postmodern Pedagogy”
3) “Constructed Bodies, Deconstructing Ads: Sexism in Advertising”