“The Consumer Isn’t a Moron; She’s Your Wife” March 13, 2007

I absolutely love that quote! It just wraps up everything that I want to say on this topic. I do believe that both men and women are starting to realize the antics that advertisers are using in order to sell their products. I don’t think that our society is totally oblivious to the images that are being portrayed and their sexual content, which is becoming more and more obvious and less and less tasteful. But what men and women are not grasping is that these ads are disrespectful and further are becoming deeply embedded in our minds as normal. That is why I love this quote! Sure it is easy to sit there and think “wow any women who buys those jeans hoping to look like that model is an idiot”, but no one realizes that it is their wife, mother, sister, girlfriend or friend who are effected by these thoughts. On the other end of the spectrum women think “wow any man who finds that to be attractive is a total pig, and does not see women as anything more than an object”, but no one realizes that, that man had been persuaded to see women that way. We seem to have pulled ourselves away from the issue, we don’t want to be involved, but it is too late. There is no way that anyone could genuinely say that after every ad they see, they stop for a moment and de-brief. These images and ideas slip into us; unless we consciously fight each idea in every ad, we will be effected. Individuals do not have time to sit down at the end of the day and think over and over again “Women are NOT objects, Men are NOT pigs” … or “Women are marginalized, we live in a man’s world”. Ads have become so conniving and frequent that we no longer have any control over what is embedded in our minds.  

When someone is confronted with the question what can we do to stop this cycle; the obvious answer is to say “bring attention to the problem” We need to convince young girls that there is more to them than their sexuality, and to boys that they are more that testosterone. Which does have potential to work and possibly to stop the rapid decline of self-esteem in this country, but who is going to do that? The individuals with the economic capital and resources, of course! And who are those people; well they are owners of large corporations. Alright so here we have Dove, who has done a magnificent job of demonstrating that behind all the work that beautiful woman is actually quite normal looking, nothing special, just average. Which can be helpful, it shows that no one naturally looks that beautiful. So we can all put down our mascara and love ourselves, right? Wrong, Dove ends their ad saying join our campaign, help girls create higher self-esteems. This is just another technique for selling products! The term is called “Affectual Rationality”, meaning that because this corporation is associating themselves with charity and kindness, more people will purchase their products. When a consumer walks into the cosmetic aisle and is forced to decide between a bar of Dove soap or of Olay, Dove is hoping that the consumer will remember the commercial and think “Wow, Dove is really trying to make a difference; I should support them and their campaign” What Dove has just done is sold another bar of soap, how many girls feel better about themselves, we will never know!