Liberation with consumerism, Individuality in uniformity

In light of Szerelem's latest post on “Fat Issues”, I decided to re-post something I wrote ages ago. Remember the Dove “Real Beauty” campaign? I do believe it won a number of accolades. My thoughts at that time:

Have you noticed the ads all over buses for the “Real Beauty Campaign”? They feature women who wouldn’t fit into conventional notions of beauty, with slogans like “Boy or Babe? What’s wrong with short hair” etc. Hmm, some of them are downright silly, but I was like, yeah it’s a good initiative, we need to change public perceptions and so on. Then I saw this ad when I was watching television in which hundreds of these women wearing identical wigs fling them off and dance about with glee- I suppose this is intended to be all very symbolic and impressively significant. The woman liberates herself from the societal perceptions of outer beauty? She’s finally realized that this obsession with stereotypical beauty is more pain than pleasure? No siree, it’s much more than that. A voiceover proclaims something to the effect of Women free yourself! Change perceptions and discover inner beauty with Dove!!

Yes ma’am, step right up, and liberate yourself. Find individualism and break free from stereotyping from all of you using the same damn homogenous product rolled off factory lines and customized right down to the last bit, just for you. It’s so special and unique. Why, you’ll never know that by appealing to your indignant feminist side, they’re just hoping to sucker you into buying more of the same products which enable you to tap into your feminine side and embrace their idiom of conventional beauty. Be individualistic. Now all of you buy the same damn thing.