Thursday, October 1, 2009

Aesthetics and Consumerism


In his lecture on Tuesday, Professor Groening spoke of big business's oft-used defense against any misstep or continued oversight: being "helpless before the consumer." Of course, this is immediately ridiculous to many people: if we're all consumers, why do we feel we're not determining anything about their products? Who are the people in these focus groups they use anyway? A paradox is constructed -- do people determine business or does business determine people? The trouble is, it's a one-sided conservation, as the corporate voice, as expressed in its statements, products, and media, is far stronger and more unified than that murky group called consumers. In this unfair relationship, that's why people's agency gets confined to their product purchases. It is a sorry political state to be sure. The relationship of business blaming the public for what they do wrong becomes even more troubling when you flip it: business taking credit for doing good with their media, or maybe even teaching the public a lesson or two.

One of the most egregious offenses for me is Dove's Campaign for Real Beauty, which ostensibly is to promote all body types by showing larger-than-the-average-model women, while actually reinforcing the same old aesthetics (and negative body image issues that accompany these). Dove advances the idea that they are doing a great humanitarian service by showing young, fresh-faced women with well-defined waists and hourglass figures, as if that's the aesthetic opposite of thin models. Featuring pretty, aesthetically pleasing models of a slightly different shape does nothing to upend old beauty paradigms, though Dove seems ready to canonize itself for its efforts. I would say "Why not show women who carry weight in their waists, or with sagging breasts, or gaunt frames, or masculine features?" But of course Dove's response would be to plead helplessness before the consumer...after all, nobody wants to see that, right?

-- Nic Mooney

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