Summer of Dove (Media In A Lather Over Soap Models)

Newsweek ^ | 8/3/05 | By Susanna Schrobsdorff

[Airborne1986]

Summer of Dove Are the women in the company’s new ad campaign too big to sell beauty products, or have our minds gotten too small?

Newsweek Updated: 3:13 p.m. ET Aug. 3, 2005 Aug. 3 - Even if you haven’t seen Dove’s "Campaign for Real Beauty," you’ve probably heard about it. The ads promote a new line of skin-firming creams and feature six "regular" women of varying sizes and ethnicities cheerfully posing in plain white underwear. The curvy nonmodel models were introduced by Dove in June, but newspapers across the country are still simmering with dueling diatribes about Dove's selection of women who are neither skinny nor camouflaged in sexy clothes. Everyone seems to have an opinion about whether the women are a revolutionary rejection of the superthin media ideal, or just nice girls who are too chubby to be up on billboards wearing next to nothing.

...

There is a surprising amount of hostility in some reactions to the ads. Lucio Guerrero, a staff reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times who was apparently offended by the sight of the ads on his commute, wrote on July 19: "Really, the only time I want to see a thigh that big is in a bucket with bread crumbs on it."

[George Smiley]

When you post an image using HTML you don't have to include dimensions unless you are trying to size it up or down.

True, but if you post an image using WIDTH= and HEIGHT= in the IMG SRC tag, the page loads faster because the browswer knows how much space to allow for the image (it doesn't have to wait for the image to load completely before proceeding with the rest of the page content.)

(I'll bet he must think he's taller when he's lying down.)

[George Smiley]

If the researcher has a Harvard MBA he would probably come up with the average consumption of a customer in terms of bars per square-foot-year.

If the researcher was really bright he'd be using short women:

Why?

Short people cuddle better because they have a smaller surface area to unit volume ratio; in other words more of us is on the outside.

[Erasmus]

True, but for this reason:

In a short person, the ratio of surface area to volume is larger. This means that one radiates more heat and is therefore cooler.

Therefore, to keep warm, short people need to cuddle together to conserve thermal energy.

[George Smiley]

Yes. But cuddling is outside adjacency (don't go there!), so when a short person cuddles they do it more efficiently.

[Quinotto]

I hadn't seen these signs in Las Vegas but I was in NYC in mid-July and saw them all over the place. Disgusting! I am a strong advocate of young, fit, goodlooking women in states of undress. This ad campaign is stomach turning! :-)

Awww, poor baby, you had to suffer so :)

[Miss Marple]

To all of the male critics posting on this thread: I must assume you are all rail-thin with abs like iron. I am sure you will post pictures of yourselves in a state of undress so we all may judge.

Speaking for myself, should I attain a size 8, I will be quite happy, regardless of the prevalence for those far skinnier.

And men wonder why women are sometimes quite cynicial....

[HitmanLV]

Yep, but I'll manage...

[Erasmus]

You see, Miss Marple, I need to find a skinny girl so that we can average out to something reasonable.

[Miss Marple]

LOL! Well done!