One check for fat, two for wrinkled.

Decoding/ Deconstructing Advertising: Choose and analyze an advertisement.

After spending eighteen years, sixty-seven days, and twenty-two hours in a media filled environment, I have pinpointed a series of advertisements that puzzle me more than any other. The Dove company (most commonly known for their skin care products) has produced a number of advertisements that try to enlighten women to love themselves the way they are; including fat and wrinkly ones. Although the company tries to boost the self esteem of women, they sure do try to find best looking of the "not perfect" people for the job - all the women in their advertisements are very pretty.

There is one aspect of their advertising that really baffles me; Dove's intended audience is women of all ages, but in most of their advertisements, the models are half naked... or worse, naked with rolls and wrinkles exposed. If they were trying to attract middle-aged, single, lonely men, I would understand their advertisements better. But why do women have to look at other naked women on big billboards? The answer is simple; as a reflection of themselves.

In his novel, "Ways of Seeing," John Berger states, "A woman must continually watch herself. She is almost continually accompanied by her own image of herself... From earliest childhood she has been taught and persuaded to survey herself continually" (Berger, 46). In this chapter, Berger writes about women and their appearances in photos and paintings, ultimately concluding that these paintings and photos of women were specifically made for men. No one ever likes to look at themselves nude, but Dove is making women face their nudeness head on. Using Berger's essay as a reference, women are watching themselves in the images of these Dove models. They have no idea who they are, or what they are like, but these women are connected in ways that go as far back as the Renaissance.

With these advertisements, Dove is recreating the "men act and women appear" era, where women must survey themselves as a man would survey them (Berger, 47). Dove doesn't really care about raising the self-esteem of women, they are just trying to get women to use their products to try and be more beautiful. "Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at... The surveyor of woman in herself is male: the surveyed female. Thus she turns herself into an object - and most particularly an object of vision: a sight" (Berger, 47).

Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. London: Penguin Books Ltd., 1972. Print.