Dove(R) and Hollywood Team Up to Give Girls a Reality Check About What Goes on Behind-the-Scenes
The new campaign was developed to help girls realize what they see in movies and magazines represents an unrealistic standard of beauty, not an everyday achievable look. As part of its commitment to build self-esteem in girls, the Dove Self-Esteem Fund is sponsoring self-esteem building workshops with inspirational celebrities and new online tools in an effort to educate moms, mentors and girls. The program also features "Onslaught," an attention- grabbing viral film that dramatizes the barrage of images and messages girls constantly face. As with all Dove Campaigns, the impetus for the program is grounded in startling new research about the factors that influence girls' body image.
Girls Fixate on Flaws, Self-Esteem Suffers
According to a recent survey conducted by the Dove Self-Esteem Fund and Seventeen magazine, more than four in 10 girls and young women only see their flaws when they look in the mirror. This is not surprising considering more than half of girls and young women say they get ideas for the way they want their bodies to look from celebrities and media, and 56 percent of girls and young women believe celebrities tend to have perfect bodies.
Girls are increasingly looking to celebrities as their role models because they are widely celebrated in media and society," commented Ann Kearney-Cooke, Ph.D., licensed psychologist and distinguished scholar for the Partnership for Women's Health at Columbia University. "Girls take away the message that these images represent a societal norm, and as a result punish themselves for not living up to impossible beauty ideals. The cycle continues to intensify as these perceived flawless images further inundate their world in overwhelming quantities."
Images Surround Girls
Girls are being besieged with all types of media in nearly every corner of their lives: * The average person sees between 400 and 600 advertisements per day(1) -
equivalent to more than one message for every waking minute.
- * The average US girl has the opportunity to see an estimated 77,546
commercials by the time she is 12 years old.(2)
http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/prnewswire/NYTU06002102007-1.htm
For the most part young girls who come to church, will look at the average girls, who desire to look at BS (you know here she is in the news often these days) . They have a worldview rather than a Christian Worldview.
Charles E. Whisnant
Director of Chrsitian Education
Portsmouth Ohio
MY SISTER ELLEN RESPONDED TO ME BY E MAIL AND SENT THIS:
^
Brother Charles, (Ellen is my sister, mother of two and grandmother of three, and she is ten years younger than I am)
I am always interested in news about media and how it affects our children. While the media and peers greatly affect them, we as parents still hold the key to what we present to them in the home.
Too, I must tell you that I HIGHLY DETEST Dove's campaign. It sickens me that they think they have to put naked women of all ages and sizes to send a message to young girls and women. Give me a break. When I was sitting in a theater waiting to watch an animated movie and all of a sudden Dove commercials popped up FULL SCREEN with these naked women, there was a hush that filled that large room...and then you heard a number of kids saying, "YUCK." I sat there as an older female quite embarrassed for the female gender. What is our problem? Do we not think we can speak on any other terms except thru nudity to get the right message to these young people?????
What about sending the message that our minds are what's important???? And we don't have to see their nudity to prove that women of all ages and sizes have value. Good Heavens!!! We need mercy and forgiveness on the mess that is presented to the youth of today. We can't even get the right good messages sent out without screwing them up with wrong images.
Yes, I know that the ads were not full frontal nudity...but it does prepare us for it. Josh McDowell has spoken for years about how the media desensitizes us by just this kind of toxic confusion...to set us up for more and more invasive attacks on God's Standards.
Have you seen these ads????? Please inform your audience to proceed with caution. I have not found a Christian yet that saw them and approved...but found them to be extremely distasteful and not productive to the cause Dove claims they are trying to present. I will continue to send a clarion call saying that they need toput these same women in clothing and have them present WHO they are internally not externally and that will make the difference with respect instead of being jeered at/made fun of.
Teens do NOT have to see skin to get the message...they are smarter than that. But as usually we dumb them down. Teens do not have to see skinny naked women or older wrinkled naked women, or over sized naked women to get the point that we as women are of value....for our minds and hearts and not our bodies. Yet, the very message Dove claims they are sending is destroyed with stripped down women.
And I will not be and have not been buying any Dove products. Where are we as Christians in all this???? Wake up!!!! We need to be having our own campaign in helping women instead of letting the world take over. This is where I am reminded of Jerry Falwell...he didn't sit on his back side...he did something instead of letting the world take over. He's gone so who will be the one to speak out now???? At least individually we can begin. So that is what I am doing even as I email this to you.
Dove is supposed to be a cleaning product....but their message is not. I know I stand alone perhaps in the circle of the world...but that is life. I will NEVER believe we have to resort to nudity to prove anything. The only nakedness we should have is before our Lord and Savior.
And the sharing of our souls and bodies with our spouses. That's the beauty of it all. It is special and reserved. We are not animals. But then sometimes you wonder.
your sister,
