A Corporation in Feminist Clothing? Young Women Discuss the Dove 'Real Beauty' Campaign

Datos Bibliográficos

ID2370180
AutoresJudith Taylor (0000-0001-8024-271X, University of Toronto, autor de correspondencia), Josée Johnston (0000-0002-4886-1809, University of Toronto), Krista Whitehead (Mount Royal University)
Año2016
Volumen42
Número1
Páginas123-144
Fecha de publicación2016-01-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaCritical Sociology (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0896-9205 • E-ISSN: 1569-1632
EditorialSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/0896920513501355
OpenAlexW2050422637
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas22
Referencias citadas48

The Dove campaign for 'real beauty' has been exceptionally successful, generating public attention and increased sales. This article uses focus group analysis to investigate how young, feminist-identified women understand the campaign, and how they respond when a corporation encourages them to exercise their politics through consumption. We ask whether the campaign is seen as compatible with their vision of feminism, and whether corporations are potential vehicles for feminist change. To conceptualize critical consciousness, we suggest that classical critical theory, particularly Herbert Marcuse, can be fruitfully connected with contemporary critical and feminist theories of capitalist cooptation. Participants varied in their critiques, but relished the opportunity for deliberation, and displayed a clear capacity to disentangle 'opposites' like feminism and corporate profiteering. Most women saw the campaign as 'better than nothing' and supported some notion of ethical consumption - a kind of pragmatism that suggests the difficulty of imagining alternatives to consumer capitalism

Beauty · Capitalism · Corporation · Feminism · Political science · Politics · Sensibility · Social science · Sociology · Fashion and Cultural Textiles · Gender Studies · Gender, Feminism, and Media · Law · Social and Cultural Dynamics