Elizabeth Hurley

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I'm really sorry that Dove products don't work well on me. I like the ads very much and would like to support the company that came up with them, but I haven't found a Dove product that I actually like, and that's -- go figure -- a major factor in which products I buy.

I do dislike the slogan: I'm a curvy size 4, and I don't think I'm who they mean, and linear women of whatever size are real, too. But I like the images.

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This is an American launch of an older British campaign. I don't remember whether they claimed their models were particularly large; I think they just claimed they were ordinary. So it's ironic that (unless it's just my imagination) the American models are just a little less large and saggy than the British originals.

You might be interested in this ad industry article. The ad team that created the campaign posed for a poster of their own that briefly ran on a billboard outside their Kingston-on-Thames offices. The article also shows their followup PR efforts that branch out into advanced age, heavy freckles, and thinness/small breast size.

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I didn't even notice anything unusual about the ads when I saw them: the models look like normal, attractive women -- maybe a little skinnier than the average, but not much. They look like a lot of the women I see at the gym, and in the supermarket, and on the street. Actually, what they look like is the body type that people are going to the gym to attempt to get.

It strikes me as odd that they took six women who DO look like the people that other people are trying to look like, and folks are weirded out by that.

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That's not the kind of body most women who go to the gym want that I know. A bit too padded around the middle.

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Funny you should mention that ad campaign—just today I saw the group poster at the 14th Street subway station; previously I'd only noticed the smaller phone kiosk ads that featured one woman at a time.

Until today I didn't realize it was a deliberate "large women" campaign, I just thought Dove was broadening its portfolio to include stunningly attractive women who aren't anorexic.

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I loved them. When the opened in London they made me stop and stare. I have never before seen anyone who looked like me on a poster.

It isn't just a matter of being a larger size. These women are *shaped* like me. And one of the things this means is that these women look better out of clothes than in them, because clothes aren't cut for the likes of us. I haven't bought an off the peg shirt in ten years, because to get it to button at the front it needs to be two sizes bigger than I am in the shoulders, rib cage or waist.

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You should look at Bravissimo's curvy shirts, designed to fit women who would take an ordinary size on their shoulders, back, waist, but need a bigger size for their bust.

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They didn't look like big women to me. They looked normal. In fact, they looked smaller than me, and I think of myself as normal.

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I agree. I was looking at that ad thinking "what big women?" Hell, 1/2 of them I'd think of as being rather skinny, the rest simply normal. It's rather depressing what modern society's definition of "big" has become when applied to women's bodies. Ruben must be doing about 2000 RPM in his grave right about now.

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I'm somewhat confused by that article; in amongst the provacatives, the beautiful womens, etc. there's the author (and apparently a few other 20 year old males who still wank to playboy) whinging about big thighs. Oh my god! Size 8! Gonna need a tow truck to move that one.

It's truly a bizzare article.

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Well, hot damn and hubba hubba! *grin* I for one am drooling. Actual honest-to-goodness hot women in the media, who'da thunk it?

Put me in the "Heartily approve" category. I'll save my Viewing With Alarm for the twitboy who wrote the disapproving column and his water cooler buddies.

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Amen to that! All of them are what I think of as real and damn sexey too.

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The depressing thing is that, according to a salon.com article today, the "real women" campaign isn't for Dove's general products like lotion or soap, but for anti-cellulite cream.

I had been admiring the Dove campaign (even though, as you point out, the women aren't large except in bizarro advertising land), but that leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I guess Dove's message is "Love your body; just don't love it too much."

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I don't understand.. those women are supposed to be big? Sure they're not anorexic but they've all got flat or nearly-flat stomachs. Weird.

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Which only shows you just how far in the wrong direction this society has gone.

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Those Dove women look perfectly normal to me, but then I go to my local Y a lot.

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This is also being discussed in fat_feminists, a keen but moderate-traffic group I recommend in general. The comments include a picture of a larger model who was apparently cut from the campaign even before those complaints. She's a real hourglass-figure hottie.

My comment there:
I can see the argument that advertisers, especially sellers of beuty products but just as artists (well, more or less artists), should use models who are ideal in appearance and represent what their viewers aspire to be. However, I personally more hold to the idea that advertisers should show people that their viewers can identify with as they are. Unfortunately, many people think of themselves as "really" slender and "temporarily" fat, despite all evidence to the contrary. Thus even many fat people don't see a heavy model as looking like them. For this reason, I think advertising and culture have to work in a mutually reinforcing cycle: advertising should show a wider range of body types, leading to more people actually recognizing how they look, leading to more advertising seeing various body types as actually beautiful. I actually think this is happening, though there is also a strong backlash--it reminds me of politics in the late 1960s, early 1970s.

Supergee's point about the incorporation of models of color into the campaign is a hopeful sign for such a beneficial mutual reinforcement between cultural values and advertising, or at least the mass media in general, regarding people of size.

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"Unfortunately, many people think of themselves as "really" slender and "temporarily" fat, despite all evidence to the contrary."

You look at people like Carnie Wilson, Camryn Manhiem and Roseanne Barr.
Three women in the entertainment industry who attempted to fashion themselves into spokespeople for Fat Acceptance.
Look at them now.
This is not to say they can't lose weight, and still be enlightened, BUT it does send a heap powerful contradictory message to the world.
On the other end of the scale (no pun intended) you've got Stevie Nicks and Ann Wilson (formerly of "Heart" later of "The Lovemongers") and Linda Ronstadt who are comfortable enough in their own skins to simply be themselves.

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Federico Fellini's "Dolce Vita" contains a brief scene in which Anita Ekberg's Sylvia climbs the steps of a church and muses on how helpful this would be to Marilyn Monroe in her dieting. (I wonder what Hurley's response to Ekberg's size would be: "I'd swallow prussic acid rather than be as fat as Anita Ekberg"?)

"The Seven-Year Itch" is at the Film Forum for a week. I think I may have to catch it before it goes. If only for the sake of Ms. Hurley and a handyman's big...fat...poodle.

Salaam to supergee, namaste to nellorat and walla walla washington and kalamazoo to womzilla, says the sparrow.

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"Federico Fellini's "Dolce Vita" contains a brief scene in which Anita Ekberg's Sylvia climbs the steps of a church and muses on how helpful this would be to Marilyn Monroe in her dieting. (I wonder what Hurley's response to Ekberg's size would be: "I'd swallow prussic acid rather than be as fat as Anita Ekberg"?)"


You know the irony of her appearence in Fellini's "Intervista"?

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I was thinking some more, and one thing that really bothered me about the idiot writer of that article was that he was talking about the ideal. Not "ideal" or "an ideal" but "the ideal." As in, there can be only one way to be beautiful, and everything is measured in distance from it.

Beauty and sexuality are not a Highlander movie, for pity's sake.

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There are "real women" in lots of different sizes. Does anyone really think they're making the common culture safer or more welcoming for large women by attacking small women? What a wonderful message of body acceptance! If a woman is "too fat," she's accused of having no self-control, of being selfish and lazy and disgustingly unattractive. If a woman is "too thin," she's accused of having eating disorders (which are somehow more contemptible than other diseases. I'm stunned by the ethics of heaping blame on someone who already has a problem characterized by self-loathing, but I digress,) of not being a real woman, of being disgustingly unattractive.

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Yeah, I really think the idea of calling "large" women "real" is rather silly. It implies women who aren't large are somehow less than real, lacking in substance and to be looked down upon and we all know where that sort of thing leads. It's divisive rather than affirmative and just puts off having to deal with any real issues. Self-acceptance isn't about belittling people who aren't like yourself.

(That said, I don't find the advert appealing or unappealing -- it's just a bunch of women in their undies and I've long passed the age when that in itself is enough to even register.)

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I thought the advert was for Dove ice cream bars, and not Dove soap, etc.

K. [doesn't think "between a size 8 and 10" is actually a BIG woman]

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Now that would be an advertsing campaign!

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I get that it's all relative, but that's all the more reason why they shouldn't be on a billboard. See, ads 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.

Wow, so the very women he says he finds attractive he also finds freakish. That's one fucked-up sex drive he's got.

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for the most part I like the campaign, but I wish that they had included some women who didn't have an hourglass figure.

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I wish they could find a way to word the title of that campaign without discriminating against women whose bodies may well be naturally flatter or more angular. I'm all for affirming and rejoicing in curvey (and VERY curvey) women, but I don't think it's any better to tell women who are less curvey (or not curvey at all) that they don't get to be considered "real" than the reverse would have been.

The, "I'd rather die than be as fat as Marilyn Monroe," quote, however, is beyond ridiculous. Whatever one things of fat, there are few things I'd prefer death to. I'd rather live with the loss of a limb than die. That speaks to entirely off-kilter priorities.

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When Elizabeth Hurley is no more, not as many people will have heard of her as have heard of Marilyn Monroe,

People will still be watching Marilyn's movies.

But when someone mention's Hurley, people will scratch their heads and say "who? Elizabeth who?"

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This discussion reminds me a bit of the press when Sara Rue began in "Less Than Perfect". She was billed as a 'larger woman'.

Yeah right.

Same thing with the Dove models. They are pretty women, and they certainly aren't size two. But 'big' women? Uh uh, they are not.

And I have to agree,it isn't any better to tell women who are less curvey, or not curvey, that they aren't real. It's the same kind of discrimination.

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It is better that someone is moving away --albeit in baby steps-- away from the image that the perfect woman is an anorexic boy scout.

Is there more opportunity for growth? You betcha damn sure. Am I going to beat up on Dove for not doing more than they have? Nope.

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Well, I don't think anyone who watched the U.S. Women's Olympic Beach Volleyball team win a gold medal last year would say that Kerri Walsh or Misty May aren't real women!

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Well it's also very un-sexy underwear (which can often be sexy) -- plain white cotton panties and the like.

They have ads at the mall I walk through twice a day (my Metro stop is in the basement) and you can see a lot more supple flesh on display just by scanning around the food court.

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It's the beauty industry - which makes almost all its money by encouraging people to feel that their appearance is somehow inadequate and that this magic product will bless them with adequacy.

It's an ad for fucking thigh cream, which (a) doesn't work and (b) even if it did work, is entirely unnecessary.

Hello?! All they want to do is sell thigh cream to women who have previously thought "I'm so fat that why should I bother?"

Forgive me for failing to be the least bit impressed or grateful for the ad.

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Exactly.

Advertising thigh cream is nearly at the top of my list of things I would ban for misleading conduct if I ever ruled the world. Expensive bullshit in a bottle.

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not reading the other comments, cause in a hurry; sorry. but quickly want to say this:

it's a sad day when we become grateful to a cosmetics company that's solidly part of the whole billion dollar "beauty" machine for managing to figure out a way to use a tiny bit more normalness to sell us yet more "firming cream". i caught myself applauding them when i first saw the ads. five minutes later i woke up.

good grief. fuck dove! real women don't get conned into using "firming cream".

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I think they all look damn hot and it's good to see something other than "Concentration Camp Chic" for once.
The one large blonde woman doing the hands-on-hips "Superman"-like pose looks a lot like my current primary partner in size and shape and there are resemblances to the other(s) in the assemblage.

On the fact that it's really an ad for one of the more lame-ass cosmetic products out there, yes, but that's advertising's function. To sell us lame-ass stuff. If we actually REALLY truly needed it, they would have to blow money on ads.

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