Selfies

In this modern day and age ‘selfies’ have become a form of empowerment for younger girls everywhere. Vloggers such as in the video above have taken a stance on making the ‘selfie’ a thing that makes people feel beautiful, rather than a mark of vanity.

At the Saturday Girl: Women Visibility and Playful Acts conference I attended at Munroe House, Joan Murtell talked about a project she was doing with a young girls group which involved ‘selfie’ taking. She found that the girls mainly deleted all the photos they took of themself, and thought that perhaps the ability to pick, choose and edit the photos they take is where the empowerment in ‘selfie’ taking comes from.

Brands such as Dove have noticed the empowering nature of the ‘selfie’ and have created a project out of it for their Real Beauty Campaign.

In the campaign girls and their mothers take selfies that are put in a public exhibition “visitors are encouraged to leave Post-It notes on the portraits, which compliment the very features the women are self-conscious of.” This helps to encourage the stance that all bodies (or faces) are beautiful and natural and that “women are often too critical of their looks”. These kind of adverts, I think are helpful because they give a less distorted view of beauty in the world. By using both mothers and daughters it makes the message of the video more applicable to different generations as women of all ages are told there are problems with them so they’ll buy whatever product.

Dove have been criticized  not for their Real Beauty Campaign but due to the fact the company they are owned by also own Lynx/Axe and Slimfast with have conflicting messages with slimfast encouraging weight loss and lynx’s sexualisation of the model body.

 

http://www.salon.com/2014/03/01/what_dove_gets_wrong_in_its_new_selfie_campaign_partner/ //March 1st 2014 // Kate Knibbs

http://theweek.com/article/index/204565/doves-real-beauty-campaign-hypocritical // June 30th 2010 // ‘The Week Staff’

http://theillusionists.org/2013/04/the-problem-with-dove/ //April 18th 2013 // Elena

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/01/23/dove-real-beauty-selfie_n_4650573.html // January 23rd 2014 // Brogan Driscoll