So, how was life in Pfitzer’s Preparation H division?

Or does Dove/Ogilvy allow their graphics department to send advertising campaigns to print without approval?

Furthermore, on the issue of “why people get so upset over clever (and/or viral) marketing,” I think of it like this: you’re at a party, and there’s that guy who always hits up his friends for favors or cash and doesn’t ever pay them back. You all know him, you’ve all got someone like that in your life. Maybe he’s genuinely charming, but you know it’s all in service of parting you with a few of your dollars. You see him across the room and he zeroes in on you. You can sense his desperation but maybe you get genuinely interested in your conversation. Then he asks for ten bucks so he can pay for a cab. He’s never going to help you move and he doesn’t care about what you have to say, but he’ll pretend to if he thinks he can get something for it. 

We should always be critical of advertising–we should never drop our guard and think of massive, profit-driven corporations where no one individual is accountable to anyone (government, the public, their company) as friends. They aren’t our friends (they aren’t people). That doesn’t mean that Nabisco or Unilever aren’t making products we can’t use, but they don’t have our best interests in mind. What they have is a cost-benefit relationship to the consumer: how can I make as much money while offering as little benefit to my customer as possible? Or, rather, what can I get away with? And all those decisions and all of the responsibility are diffused over many people. Having a critical relationship to media and corporations is our only defense when they make bad decisions. 

That’s why viral marketing is so irritating. They’re trying to close the emotional distance we need to keep between us. They’re imitating something they know we’ll instantly relate to completely uncritically. We don’t have to worry that the person who owns Colonel Meow or the people making all their Harlem Shake videos are trying to pull one over on us–they’re just participating in Internet culture. 

I can’t stop Unilever or Dove from making ads like this, of course, but we need to have conversations about it. As an artist, I don’t have specifically have anything against commercial art–that sounds like a good job to me. It’s telling, though, that instead of taking responsibility for the content of advertising, they blame artists for distorted media. Your friend Joe doesn’t care that your girlfriend dumped you, but he’s willing to call her names if it means you’ll give him enough to pick up a six-pack on the way home.

And they claim to be doing this to show the “truth” of what beauty is.

I can’t recall who said it, but “The truth never needs to be supported by a lie.”

And beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

I’m glad there are guys out there who like chubby women.  Leaves more lean and fit ones for me!

On Dove’s website, you can either be one click away from ‘advices how to help your teenage girl’s self-esteem’ OR some deodorant stick that will ‘beautify your armpits in 5 days’. They have a caption on the website that asks “What would you say to your 13 year-old self?”… Oh, I don’t know, but probably something along the lines of “PLEASE don’t start fretting about your armpits being all prettisome”.

Sure, it seems really nice to say something cute about women with pounds and pores and wrinkles here and there, but it doesn’t change the fact that they are still filling the world with products avowing that these wrinkles and pores and fugly armpits will be gone if you just buy the stuff, and you will feel so much more wonderful for it! That oxymoron is all over the place. Dove isn’t being that original, creative OR altruistic.

Here’s something that would show a lot more earnestness in their little effort to save women from crazy unrealistic expectations than some contrived gimmick about Photoshop: Pull out the anti-wrinkle creams. Pull out the ‘armpit beautifying pit sticks’. Pull out any product that imply that perfectly natural, normal and healthy body features are diseased and ugly and should be fussed about. Stick with soap that cleans, creams that help actual skin problems and loofahs or whatever. The Dove men’s section doesn’t have anti-wrinkle and pretty armpits shit in it (yet). How about making that low-maintenance message equal-opportunity? Of course they wouldn’t. They’d lose way too much money and besides ‘women really WANT these products’, ‘supply and demand’, etc, etc…  But at least they’d be putting their money where their mouth is.

Aspiration aspiration aspiration.

According to what they claim, this company put out a piece of software that billed itself as one thing, but then did something else that the user did not want to do. To me, that’s the definition of a Trojan which is a form of malware.

I hope that the writers of this piece of hackivism allowed their victims the ability to undo the change. If the intent was to do true damage, where does this stop? Is it okay to make something think they’re downloading porn only to reformat their hard drive because they degrade women? Or, maybe claiming to offer a religious hymnal, but instead play some sexual heavy metal tune because you feel that religion breeds hatred?

Maybe I am not photoshopping some women in her undies for a beauty ad. Maybe I am trying to restore an old photo. Is it okay now to destroy my work? Do I at least get an apology?

I don’t use photoshop, and I have nothing to do with the beauty industrial complex. I am not for hackavism. The hackavist sets themselves up as judge, jury, and executioner. They make a personal decision of what they feel is right or wrong and then met out whatever punishment they feel. And, they usually do it in an a way to hide their identity in order to hide from any sort of negative consequence for their actions.

I agree that the Photoshop action is clearly meant to “go viral” and seems so tame of a hack that only a wide-eyed 12 year old would think it had any impact on the Photoshop user. I guess companies are still trying to figure out how to make something go viral, but you wish someone on their team had reviewed and just said no.

Turns out those photos, according to the May 12, 2008 issue of The New Yorker, were as digitally manipulated as any skinny model-festooned fashion spread. It’s mentioned in a Lauren Collins profile of the toucher-upper himself, Pascal Dangin, who works regularly forVogue, Dior, Balenciaga, and many others. Hear what Dangin has to say about the Dove project on page 100:“Do you know how much retouching was on that?” He asked. “But it was great to do, a challenge, to keep everyone’s skin and faces showing the mileage but not looking unattractive.”

I don’t think something like this would fool a pro, but I do see it as corporate-sponsored malware since it manipulates a user’s work file in a way different from what is stated in order to advance an ideology instead of provide a tool for productive work.

Me – I’m one of those Creatives pushing pixels and it is quite common to be told “just fake it” in one form or another.  So I’m to refuse to do what the client asks because it is ‘stealing the model’s ‘real beauty”?  Trageting Photoshop artists as villians in this is like getting mad at the bus driver because the route doesn’t go down your street.

I make NPCs for a virtual world I am working on. Using something like Skin Glow would have added a bit more realism to them. Imagine the crap I would have gone through if this info hadn’t been put out there.

The naked truth tastes rather bitter, I suppose.  But at least it makes me smile from time to time.

And by the way, “chubby” girls are much more attractive than their sickly looking counterparts.  Carry on, Dove.