Eraudica

I love this×54

This week’s episode is just an open-ended discussion about a recent experiment done about Tinder dating. Here is a link to the videos (as part of a story from The Huffington Post) - just scroll down to about the middle of the page to find them.

The Videos

So at the point in the audio where I ask you to go watch the videos, just go to this link where you will be able to watch first one and then the other.

I admit this episode may seem contradictory in parts, and that’s okay. I am just musing on this subject, I’m not entirely sure what’s going on in situations like this, I’m just ’thinking out loud’ about what might be happening. I wanted this to be a starting point for your own thoughts on the subject - do you agree with some of the things I said? Or do you think I’m way off? Do you see the conflicting nature of what you’re seeing - or does it all seem to fit with your world view? One thing I’m confident about is this - if you want to figure something out, you have to see it in its entirety, you have to consider all angles, and you have to call a spade a spade - you have to be willing and able to point out fallacies and falsehoods as well as listen and learn. One thing I don’t want is for anyone to take something like this at face value and just believe what they are being led to believe.

As a small example, you’re probably aware of the Dove Real Beauty Campaign that sprang up about 10 years ago now, the much-praised marketing promotion that saw supposed ’real’ women used in ads for Dove. A lot of people jumped on this bandwagon wholeheartedly, and supported Dove’s attempts to speak to school girls about body image and self-esteem - noble goals, of course - and yet…it wasn’t lost on many people that all of it was a campaign to sell….beauty cream. Cellulite cream, anti-aging cream, skin conditioners, etc.

And, it has to be said, the women chosen for these ads were selected much the same way ’models’ are selected - for how photogenic they were, for how bright and happy their smiles were, for how generally lovely they were. If you notice, none of their non-models were unattractive - they just weren’t stick thin and 19. And I would hazard a guess that these ads were touched up in PhotoShop - to erase inconvenient rolls of fat or blemishes - just as much as the ads with models were.

And something else to keep in mind - Dove is produced by Unilever, which also produces Axe cologne - (Lynx in the UK) which has been highly criticized for it’s sexualized images of women and the consistent message that if you just douse yourself in this stuff, supermodels will fall from the sky and want to have sex with you. They also produce Slim Fast diet products, and Fair and Lovely, a skin-lightening product marketed to dark-skinned women around the world. So ask yourself whether Unilever is just tailoring their marketing of each unique product to suit the demographic they are trying to reach.

It’s just another example, to my mind, of the critical thinking required of each of us when presented with any kind of image or statement from the media. And I think it’s especially important to question these things whenever men are portrayed as jerks or assholes or sexual predators.

music by E-train