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Real Beauty- A Short Film


SafariVista
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ok ok your going to hate me.

I think the education about the cutting of the pictures by puter to enhance a person looks is education about being real!!!!

BUT here is my story.. and Im sticking to it.

We feel better about our self when we feel good about how we look.

I do not think the aim is perfection nor unrealistic picture that has been fixed to look a certain way. (yes that is good education) BUT

WE love pretty people. I have a child who spends about three hours to get ready before she will go out!

and she looks nice, yes she has a couple extra pounds maybe a flaw or to but she does her hair she picks out outfits that look nice she looks her best. and you know what she is happy happy . I have seen my daughter who is a classic beauty over 6 feet blonde big cheekbones put her down because of her effortand laughs at her for the time she puts in to excersize and look good saying it all for nothing. YETshe has manged to put on alot of weight keeps her hair in a tail and wears no make up most days and guess what?

she isnt happy she is insecure. and she uses these types of ads as an excuse not to look her best.

On the show boston legal one of the actors is a little person she is about three feet tall and guess what she is soooo pretty! how? she wears makeup has her hair done does her nails and wears outfits that make her look pretty. and yet by our american standard she is totaly not the type we aspire to look like!

how we look does effect how we feel about our self be honest!

it isnt all about inside stuff.. if a person looks dirty or uncarded for people think they are that person and you what I think it is important the impression we give folks!

do not be silly. I went to a conference in which most of the participates had disability of some sort some very serious deformations and they wore make-up they wore pretty dresses and nice suits and they thought they were the stars of the show (and they were) looking good makes a difference for all of us.

I think it is silly to think the stars look the way they do on tv and mags naturaly and yes the education to inform is needed but so is the attitude of feeling good about ALL of you and we live in a society that has issues with those who abuse the body with obesity. be honest we do we think they must be lazy or depressed and guess what after they lose the weight we find out guess what

they were miserable and the "self esteem" increases by leaps and bounds.

be honest.

my daughter that tells me she needs two hours to get ready to go to the store to shop gets my respect much more than the daughter who goes out looking raggy and tired and in need of something or someone who cares.

because the bottom line is what is on the inside and how we present our self speaks VOLUMES on how that really is.

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Pond, I couldn't hate you :)

Being a licensed cosmetologist, I’ve seen a good haircut/style make a person look 100% better, transforming not only their looks but their countenance!

I agree, it's important for a person to take care of themselves and look their best. It DOES wonders for the self-esteem.

Personally, without my morning shower, freshly shampooed/blown-dry hair, and usual make-up, I'm ‘not ready‘ for the day. But, I'll still go to the bus-stop in my jammies, if needed :biglaugh:

I don't think the point of the Film is about NOT wearing makeup or taking care of yourself, I think the point of the film is to expose the reality of the altered images in ads/commercials, showing that the model doesn't even look like the Ad!

Without the computer enhancement, the models would look closer to reality. Still, with all the 'work' she's very beautiful I think.

My daughter, for a time thought she was never good enough, especially after looking through a teen magazine... she had a different build than the models, and the latest fashion trend didn't fit her like it did them, so, she felt bad.

There are many extremely beautiful people who think they're ugly. Why is that?

How would these unattainable images help people?

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I did say the education is helpful about the puter image.. It is in high school the pretty girls who mock those who have done nothing with their self who hurt young girls and older I suppose.

I didnt always have the money to keep with the latest fashion for my girls and they would get picked on and i said to them in anger one day so find the group of girls who parents have the same income level as us and hang out with them!!!

seriously. that is an attitude I think the keeping up with thejones come in from the parents not magazines!!!

when I see parents buying a house for 500,000 dollars with 7 bedrooms for one kid and a new car every year etc.. what does THAT teach your kid about what is important?

that I somhow do not love my own kids as much cause I refuse or cant buy my way into the lifestyle?

In a teen world it is just about how you look basicly and maybe if your lucky good grades.. they have nothing eles to compete about. does a parent say sure sure it is all about what is on the inside yet stand inline for the new technology toy or interior design for the home or a new hummer just to show off?

i think this also influences how teens may think about life and what is important, and they do go to themslefs and repeat the pattern with what is important to their "jones", their peers and compare just like momyn and daddy does.

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I have two girls. They are beautiful. I have always said the following to them:

"It's not enough to be pretty on the outside. You have to be beautiful from the inside out."

Now THAT"S my story and I'm sticking to it.......

I like the Dove campaign overall -

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It's one thing to hide your spots, gray hairs, and other things that you can from the world on your own. But this film shows how that's done in the real world, then taken into the DIGITAL world. The results are an image that can only be obtained through digital methods, but yet that's the "bar" we're expected to meet as women -

Some of the things done to the final print of the model include: changing her skin tones, changing the color of her eyes, changing the hues of her hair (notice it gets darker around her face), her eyes are brought closer together, her neck is lenthened, her hair is cloned (selecting a section, copy, paste, and layer the paste over the original for depth), her eyebrows are made to have more of an arch, her lips are made thicker, her cheekbones are accented, her eyes are finally made much bigger, and the whole image has a couple of filters run on it to make her appear sleek and smooth and perfect.

Yet the model, even without makeup, wasn't bad to look at - wish I looked that good without my face.

Prior to the digital age, photographers had to rely on certain tricks to make the models look better than they really were. I have an old print that shows a beautiful blonde in a red dress - the dress fits her every curve and her hair looks full and nice. She's a 10. Then there's a shot of what THAT shot really looked like from behind - the dress has masking tape all over the back of it to alter it to fit her body, and there's a bunch of bobbie pins and clips in her hair, at the back of her head, to make her hair poof out and look full, and so on.

So, back to the digital age...

Images of what women are SUPPOSED to look like can so easily be altered - a fictional representation of womanhood is forcefed us via every media avenue you can imagine. It's no wonder that with this digital media that girls today are trying to look more mature than they are or even develop some of the self-image issues they deal with at such younger ages - I'm glad Dove is doing this campagn because it delves into what YOU can't do for YOURSELF to make the most of your looks - it goes way beyond that.

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Exactly, Chas! There are news stories all the time now about girls and even guys, these days, committing suicide, having plastic surgery, anorexia/manorexia, bulimia, obesity, etc..... way too many problems health, mental and social because of these models and the unrealistic expectations set by the media.

Teens (and too many adults, it seems) don't realize that those images are so friggin' altered that nobody, not even Cindy Crawford looks like those pictures in real life. A friend of mine just recently moved back from NYC and said she was so surprised and apalled to see how "normal" those top fashion models look on the street when they're on their way to fashion shoots and how absolutely ugly and hideous some of them look - primarily because of how unrealistically thin they are. She said the first time she went out to a club up there where some of them hang out that they looked just like the other girls in the place regarding hair and make-up. That if it weren't for their sickeningly skinny bodies and/or reputation you wouldn't have known they were any different from anyone else in the club.

"Real world folks" don't know or think about those things - they just want those clothes, that look, that body, that perfect life they picture these people having. I applaud Dove (and Jamie Lee Curtis for that matter) for bringing these things to light and emphasizing that looks aren't all that.

Sure, everyone wants to look and dress nice, and it IS important, but there's a balance and the media doesn't promote that much less a healthy attitude and perpective on beauty.

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As an artist and designer I understand that having things look nice can make one feel better.

BUT

The thing to realise is why. When you feel good about yourself because you look nice, it is not because it is

"your best," but because it is what is generally socially accepted as beauty. Ever seen old paintings of Venus? She is usually depicted as curvey if not fat by today's standards, yet it was a depiction of beauty. The concensus has changed many times throughout history.

So which is more important? Feeling good because you conform to cultural ideas of beauty or feeling good about yourself regardless of what other people think and how you look. If the cultural norm was to be crusty and smelly then everyone would be walking around in last week's laundry, with dreadlocks, and no Dove in sight.

I agree with Kit. A smile can work wonders. :)

On the other hand....

Today there is a very good idea of what being healthy is. It requires exersise and eating well and when done properly you do have a general weight to height raito and all that. I would think that if people approached it more in light of being healthy and not "lookng good" then there would probably be more people truly "looking their best."

Most of the models these days being portrayed as what beauty is, are not healthy. Many of them are anorexic heroin addicts. OR It is as depicted in the film, normal looking people with the bone structure the pros are looking for altered to fit "the look."

I say be healthy and be yourself, and educate your kids about physical and mental health.

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Although I have many things I could say about Unilever, none of it nice, I do applaud their Campaign for Real Beauty. I think it does good on many levels. The obvious, (you are beautiful even if you don't conform to the cultural standard) and the subtle (The advertising industry manipulates image so consumers will buy.)

The trick is to get society to believe in "Real Beauty." A couple of TV shows that I have seen do an experiment where a beautiful person, and an average person are put in situations, and good things always happen to the beautiful person. The sad truth is, the better looking you are, the easier things will come to you.

I dunno. Maybe this Dove campaign will help. It sure can't hurt.

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