Beauty was once in the eye of the beholder, yet now beauty seems only to be found in the hub of youth. Universally beauty and youth are coupled and being attractive is currently defined as youthfulness. This is apparent especially in beauty product advertisements; the models are continuously young, beautiful and thin, and according to Jean Kilbourne in her article Beauty and the Beast of Advertising, “The ads sell a great deal more than products. They sell values, images, and concepts of success and worth, love and sexuality, popularity and normalcy. They tell us who we are and who we should be.” However, the Dove advertisement in Time magazine there is an older woman posing, with confidence, tastefully nude; she is not tremendously thin and nor is she what someone would expect to see in a beauty advertisement. This advertisement is attempting to break the bond of beauty and youth, and encourage the idea that beauty has no age limit, while disregarding the typecast of “normal” beauty ads. Dove is arguing that there should be no constraints on beauty, and that women should be allowed to age gracefully, as intended in the advertisement and seen on the Dove website. Instead of another advertisement promoting anti-wrinkle cream that claims it has the power to make you look younger with three applications, with a young “beautiful” model, Dove is advocating the need to realize that beautiful potential lies within us all, despite age. The rhetoric of the argument breaks this bond with successful advertising techniques.
Across the model’s body in the advertisement reads “too old to be in an anti-aging ad”, then at the bottom continues to say “but this isn’t anti-age. This is pro-age”. This statement is unfortunately true, if this were an anti-aging ad this woman would be considered too old, but it is not an advertisement that discourages aging. Most beauty advertisements portray the idea to women of a perfect body and face, which is ultimately unobtainable. Kilbourne states, “This image is difficult and costly to achieve and impossible to maintain, no one is flawless and everyone ages. Growing older is the great taboo. Women are encouraged to remain little girls ("because innocence is sexier than you think"), to be passive and dependent, never to mature”. Using an analytical method called TRACE (text, reader, author, constraints and exigence) this ad can be critiqued on all grounds. For example, test in this ad is testifying the opposite of most beauty advertisments; it is about growing old and enjoying the best years of your life, according to the Dove pro- age website. The model is not young and neither are the models on the website, but you can sense their calm nature within themselves. They are comfortable in their skin and the urgency to be young is not present. Being directed towards aging woman readers, Dove provided a well put together advertisement that pushes away all constraints. The author is Dove a company that promotes true beauty and even sponsors a Campaign for Real Beauty, which is meant to endorse that each woman or girl is uniquely beautiful (Dove Campaign for Real Beauty). This is where ethos, credibility, is found. Because Dove is a company that is devoted to making all women feel beautiful, they are not just using the tactic that beauty lies in us all to sell their products. They are a company that cares about their consumers and are in tune with their needs and wants in a real world.
Dove is trying to make a difference and make each female proud to be who they are in a time where society’s pressures are extremely hard to ignore. We are facing a period where people are afraid of growing old, and almost everyone is seeking to find the secret to eternal youth. This advertisement is trying to reach those that are compelled they must be young in order to be beautiful. There is great underlying emotion that attracts all women when they come into contact with this ad; the urgency to be beautiful, young, and thin or they will be forgotten. The pathos is the feelings present when a woman reads this ad; all women share common reactions to this ad because they are all faced with the same problem. There is logos in the ad because this is currently a dominating cultural issue and Dove is attacking it from a positive viewpoint. It is not stated anywhere in the ad that growing old means you are doomed to ugliness and disparity, it simply provides the audience with the notion that maturing should be seen as another great milestone in a woman’s life.
The logic behind the ad is incredibly good marketing skills which mark a change of direction in the anti-age movement. Anti-age has a negative connotation while pro-age is seen as in support of aging, which is appealing to woman because aging is inevitable and it is better to embrace the idea than fight it off. Instead of communicating with a better known symbol for beauty Dove takes a different approach and shows a real woman who has aged gracefully, and not ashamed of the way she looks. According to Foss, in the book entitled Contemporary Perspectives on Rhetoric, “How we perceive, what we know, what we experience, and how we act are the results of our own symbol use and that of those around us; rhetoric is the term that captures all of these processes. For us, rhetoric is the human use of symbols to communicate”. Dove is trying to exaggerate their argument using the opposite symbol we would normally see in a beauty advertisement. They are using rhetoric to manipulate the audience’s mind with images we do not associate with the symbol we are expecting. Dove makes their argument have deeper meaning than a regular beauty ad because it exemplifies a real woman, not someone who is paid to look “beautiful”. Dove uses rhetoric to their advantage and in turn gives you a different outlook on your current symbol for the subject.
Dove’s advertisement was incredibly successful and the argument was clear and concise without being pompous. Dove was bold, daring and I believe this ad could catch any woman’s eye. It approached a current issue in a positive way that caused light to shine down on the act of aging. This advertisement criticized an existing argument and formed a new and improved fresh argument on the same issue.
Works Cited:
http://www.doveproage.com/being_proage.asp
Foss, Sonja K., Foss, Karen A., Trapp, Robert. Contemporary Perspectives on Rhetoric.
Third edition. Waveland Press, INC.; Chapter 1- An Introduction to Rhetoric
Dove Advertisement. Time 3 September, 2007
Kilbourne, Jean. "Beauty...and the Beast of Advertising." Center for Media Literacy 17 September 2007
