Body image
Posted on July 06, 2003 @ 16:49 in General
Sometimes images and texts drift together, forming a new message. Last week's Volkskrant Magazine featured an article about ideal typical body-images for women and the lengths women will, or will not, go to to achieve those. The article was illustrated by a photoshopped version of a Barbie doll. Instead of the longlegged beauty ideal, this doll was made to look like and old woman, with a pudgy belly, saggy breasts, grey hair and a lined and wrinkled skin. The article, obviously, took a critical look at how women experience getting older, how they perceive their own bodies and what role different (mediated) discourses on beauty play.
That photoshopped Barbie(like) doll reminded me of an ad campaign that The Bodyshop ran a couple of years ago. They had Ruby, who illustrated that "There are 3 billion women who don't look like supermodels and only 8 who do." In their 1998 annual report, the Ruby ad campaign is described like this:
Ruby's prize-winning face and figure are the dawn of a new consciousness in the beauty business: love your body - just the way it is. The Body Shop frontperson for its selfesteem campaign grabbed headlines all over the world. She looks like a girl who enjoys life to the fullest - and that’s what self-esteem is all about. Fret about who you could be and you’re merely wasting who you are.
I went looking for a picture of Ruby on the Bodyshop website, but it seems that Ruby pretty much has disappeared from their website. Searching for "ruby" yields one hit and takes you to one of the subpages of the Selfesteem campaign. On the home page, as well as on other pages of the Bodyshop website we now find beautiful, thin models, looking happy and full of selfesteem because they use Bodyshop products. It seems that the only place on the website where you can still find an image of Ruby, is in the aforementioned year report, which is not an easy to locate pdf file. Guess Ruby had her fifteen minutes in the spotlight and was summarily asked to exit the stage right and keep going.
The irony is, that this article about "escaping the role models of beauty," was immediately followed by an advertisment trying to sell some financial product, by showing a beautiful young girl, with perfect skin, no belly to speak of, and long legs floating in the sea on an air matress, presumably illustrating that if you invest with them you will have a carefree life.
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i stopped buying from the bodyshop a long time ago. even after the Ruby campaign (which i still think was fantastic) there was always something something that wasn't quite right.
p.s. i just found your blog and adore it! you got a premiere link on my page. kudos.
Posted by ms lauren on August 02, 2003 @ 19:11
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