Feeling good

An interesting trend in advertising for women's products lately seems to be encouraging the consumers to be happy with who they are: Dove's Campaign For Real Beauty has its models plastered all over Singapore, while Always sanitary pads in the US now has a "Be Happy With Your Period" campaign. I guess ultimately it's still firms trying to sell things to people, but it does seem to be a step up from "make people feel bad so they feel a need to buy the product".

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Comments

mis_nomer said…
`happy period'? strange...
3 August 2005 at 21:44
Anonymous said…
Women are not happy with their period, trust me....

BTW, great blog.
4 August 2005 at 02:59
Indri said…
I don't care for the happy period "mantra"... maybe because there's nothing there about compulsively scrubbing the tub, which is my little periodic manifestation.

And because overall it's still about buying something--chocolate, cosmetics, going to the mall--to make yourself feel better. It suggests that women look outside themselves for comfort/pleasure/contentment (not to mention playing into tired stereotypes about female behavior), where the Dove ads have women turning inward and being their own heroes.

A "mantra" that said something like, this is the time of month you can go for a long hike by yourself if you want, that I could get behind. Something that wasn't either about spending money or behaving in a 'girly' fashion.
4 August 2005 at 04:38
tscd said…
I really like the DOVE campaign. In the UK, we had pictures of women with surgical scars from removal of cancers, and lovely freckly ladies, and graceful looking elderly women. It was pretty inspiring.
5 August 2005 at 07:58
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