Respond to a video text

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=321Kb8pBu5s

In Dove’s ‘Campaign for real beauty,’ we are presented with a holistic view into the world of marketing and advertising. Even in one minute segments, their impact is profound.
The Dove commercial opens on a black screen bearing one word- ‘onslaught’. With folksy guitar music plucking along merrily, we see the fresh face of an adorable little girl, red hair, piercing blue eyes and a sweet grin. It’s a beautiful sun shining day and as the tempo picks up the vocals sing “here it comes, here it comes, here it comes.” And indeed it does. The sudden fast forward of models is almost overwhelming. Image after image after image of women so slight they barely have a woman’s curves, pose in little more than underwear, suggestively gyrating in videos, plastered on magazine covers, boasting flawless skin on TV, selling a pill for everything from younger looking skin to tighter pores, softer hair or a thinner body, all in three short weeks (because “it really works”). While in the background we see the lonely profile of a woman on a scale, a plate full of pills and her apparent constant struggle and fluctuation with weight. We are then presented with the pain we, as a society, are willing to endure in order to achieve that promised look. Be it working out, anorexia or bulimia, even plastic surgery; poking, prodding and rearranging our one and only body. And then, there they are, a group of girls no more than 8 years old, walking either to or from school, our little red head trailing behind and written across the screen-“talk to your daughter before the beauty industry does.”
The commercial concentrates on the widely accepted cultural standard which teaches us that not only does sex sell but it’s practically a social requirement. And that same standard is what we are teaching and preaching to not just ourselves but to young girls as well. The ad entreats us to teach our daughters, our little sisters, even ourselves, that we are beautiful just as we are.