Beauty and Marketing Beastliness

I'm so glad I don't have tv or read womens magazines. It means I can chose what imagery and propaganda I see, and I'm not exposed to the damaging images of too thin women or telling me what to feed my kids or how my hair needs more body.

The Tyee has two stories, both about Unilever products. This week, in How I Became a Dove Girl, Shannon Melnyk gets behind the campaign to honour real women in their real skins, and on the other side of the world in India, last week we learned that you are a  Real Beauty... If You're White. Munisha Tumato tells us that Unilever ads there for a skin whitening cream brownness and salwar kamees with homliness and ignorance, while white skinned, suit-wearing women are considered beautiful and modern.

While women in India are told to lose their pants suits and lighten up, Tsubaki Shampoo advertising highlights changing image of women in Japan. The ad campaign features the slogan, Japanese women are beautiful. But they know that, don't they? Well, fashion and beauty ads in Japan have featured western women for decades, and all kinds of marketing campaigns, from real estate promotions to English lesson posters have featured western models and celebrities. These days, as Japanese people in general are realizing that their cultural exports - manga, movie stars, pop music - area so popular abroad, women here are more likely to have a positive self image about beauty.

I didn't like this Asience ad campaign. I adore Zhang Ziyi who is the epitome of elegance, fluidity and gracious style, but I hated the way the ads pitted western women against Asian. In the ad, when Zhang appears on the catwalk, all eyes turn to her and the western models pout as they are rejected by the male photographers and fashionistas. Marketing beastliness.