Dove Real Beauty Rhetorical Analysis

From a young age, girls learn about beauty. They watch their mom’s getting ready, they play with their ‘perfect’ Barbie dolls, and they get a preconception that beauty is the act of being beautiful. No one ever has to tell them ‘beauty is this’ or ‘you are beautiful if you look like this’ but that is the preconceived notion that girls get when they notice the same features considered as beautiful. Here, is where society falls short in the teaching of young girls to love themselves. People conform to society's standard of beauty because they believe only one exists and it can be acquired if not already obtained. The choices that people make in their style and appearance are principal in the expression of ‘real beauty’. Humans thrive off of “pleasure, choices, and changes” to “reinvent ourselves” (Source B). Without diversity all people would be a clone of each other. Society would decide which traits were most satisfying and everyone would be forced to comply. This would be without hiccup, whether differences in opinion existed or not. Hereby, beauty is not the same concept to all people. What is beautiful to one person could possibly be the exact opposite to the next. This is why the ability to choose our own standards is so significant. This becomes increasingly more difficult, however, when “we notice the attractiveness of each face we see as automatically as we register whether or not they look familiar” (Source C). Society has indiscreetly created an image of beauty in our heads. It is something we notice instinctually. Without cognizance, humans judge the beauty of things (e.g. people, places, and objects). It’s no wonder why conformity is such a priority for most. Because in just “150 msec.” (Source C) our beauty is rated. The closer we are to the ideals, the closer we are to “signif[ying] membership, belonging” (Source B). Even if we aren’t what is ideally seen as beautiful, there are always artificial ways to obtain the standard with cosmetic surgery. There is a preconception that “uncanningly …show more content…
For example, Dove has created “Dove Real Beauty”, a campaign to advertise the ideology that beauty comes in all shapes and sizes; its slogan: You are more beautiful than you think. Source G comments on Dove’s campaign stating that “every girl deserves to feel beautiful just the way she is” (Source G). While Dove’s campaign is meant to be uplifting for people who need the simple, reassuring reminder, Source G’s author, Virginia Postrel, criticizes the company with “Dove is peddling the crowd-pleasing notions that beauty is a media creation, that recognizing plural forms of beauty is the same as declaring every woman beautiful, and that self-esteem means ignoring imperfections” (Source G). She urges that real beauty shouldn’t be about ignoring imperfections but building the inner-confidence in oneself to consider oneself beautiful, flaws and all. She supports her claim with the statistic of “only two percent of women describe themselves as beautiful. … Dove’s survey [doesn’t] ask women if they think they’re unattractive or ugly, so it’s hard to differentiate between knowing you have flaws, believing you’re acceptably but unimpressively plain, and feeling worthlessly hideous” (Source G). Postrel is implying that while the message Dove is attempting to send is a good one, the data they collect and their credibility is weak and somewhat twisted. Found on