Dove has recently asked the question, “How long have we been chasing someone else’s idea of beauty?”, in their new promotion, Campaign For Real Beauty, resulting in some discussion, which, while being a refreshing change of pace from the typical lack of social discourse that is the norm, will likely do little to alter peoples beliefs. I will admit that I hold my own prejudices in this discussion; I am passionate about the real, the tangible, and the shimmer of attainability. That is my kink, the everyday.

With that in mind, Lucio Guerrero opines that billboards should be reserved for the unattainable, offering these enlightened thoughts:

[A]ds should be about the beautiful people. They should include the unrealistic, the ideal or the unattainable look for which so many people strive. That’s why models make so much money. They are freaks — human anomalies — who need to be paid to get photographed so we can gawk at them.

However, beyond the fact that in a few short words he stripped those models of their humanity, I have difficulty in believing Guerrero that he truly sees models as statistical outliers. The premise of his article is built around the notion that the everyday man and woman are far too average to gaze upon and alludes to the root of his bias and his personal kink, writing:

Hopefully, Dove will come back to its senses and make my morning commute — and Phil’s and Kevin’s and that of countless other men — a little more pleasing to the eyes.

That is the problem. To Guerrero, and countless others, the measure of beauty is a confluence of sexual yearnings and media images. The object of sexual desire has been removed, flattened into two-dimensions, air brushed, and touched up. It is devoid of personality as well as any anchor in empirical reality; these woman and men serve only to fuel his fantasies. The perversion of these fantasies is that they can alter an individual’s sense of self. How can one gaze upon these human anomalies all the while consuming the message that these individuals represent the pinnacle of beauty and not be affected when looking into the mirror?

My feeling is that the marketplace, in its attempt to appeal to customers, has contributed to a deep and widespread neurosis regarding body image and Guerrero’s comments hold that assumption up. In an environment where individuals are faced with filtering, sorting, and consuming messages all day long the process is bound to shape that person in the same way that countless footfalls slowly carve marble steps. I’ll admit that I am a victim of media saturation, in that I have a slightly warped sense of my physical self.

To be blunt, I am a block of wood with legs, not a nicely carved block of wood mind you but rather one of those letter blocks you played with as a child, the kind you and the family dog gnawed on; my body is a squat and long with flaws. At 5′ 9″ I need to shop at the big and tall for 50R suit jackets but I can run a mile and walk fifteen with no problems. Overall, I am healthly it is just that I do not look like Brad Pitt or Mark Walberg during his Calvin Klein days but I am real and that is what matters. These woman that Guerrero derides are real as well and that is what makes them so beautiful.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 4th, 2005 at 12:10 pm and is filed under Editorial. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.