Stuart Dove Ideology

Female ideologies within Dove’s ‘Campaign for Real Beauty.’
Dove’s ‘Campaign for Real Beauty’ attempts to challenge the customary, dominant conventions and ideologies of women’s beauty in today’s culture and society. Throughout this campaign, Dove aimed to celebrate ‘natural physical variation’ amongst women, and intended to help women become more confident in their own bodies. Stuart Hall (1981) defines ideology as the ‘images, concepts, and premises’ that supply the basis from which we ‘represent, interpret, and make sense’ of certain characteristics in social life. Hall believes ideologies consist of specific, deliberate concepts, which are then constructed into a distinct pattern; therefore ideologies are altered and transformed when
Woman, therefore generally try to conform to these social constructs presented by the mass media, and believe that real beauty only comes in the form of that presented in advertisements. This slightly totalitarian tactic used by the mass media is almost a form of propaganda, exploiting the public through presenting ideologies that require women to buy their product if they wish to be ‘truly beautiful.’ This capitalism is used by the media as a means of masking and distorting the perception of beauty and strengthening power relations through the creation of ‘false consciousness’, which was proposed by Karl Marx in 1867, who believed that social relations within capitalism are actually a ‘mystification of the market.’ Therefore this false consciousness confuses alienated groups, who then conform to these proposed ideologies, for example, the ideology of
However, even though this campaign is constructed on good intentions, through doing this, Dove are still manipulating the ISA’s and using the mass media to exploit proletariat into buying their products and supporting their campaign. Through utilising cunning adjectives like ‘concerned’ and verbs like ‘help’ throughout their campaign, Dove are cannily using exploitation techniques by giving the impression that they are trying to help the public, as if they are doing something for you. However, these are just glorified propaganda techniques and still the bourgeoisie are manipulating the proletariat into buying their