Quote: (01-18-2018 11:04 PM)WalterBlack Wrote:
L'Oréal Model Amena Khan Is the First to Wear a Hijab in a Mainstream Hair Ad
![[Image: lorealcampaign-lede.jpg]](https://media.glamour.com/photos/5a5fb93a56c34b4915cf782d/master/w_644,c_limit/lorealcampaign-lede.jpg)
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From banning Photoshop to casting diverse faces and launching inclusive shade ranges, beauty brands are shifting the way they speak to shoppers. They're finally trying to speak to all of us. While some folks have questioned the motivation behind the diversification of beauty campaigns—especially after brands tried capitalizing on the success of what's being called "The Fenty Effect"—this latest ad gets it right. For its new Elvive campaign, L'Oréal Paris UK brought on British beauty blogger Amena Khan as one of its new faces.
Even in a time when exciting, unique women are scoring beauty contracts left and right—shoutout to Maye Musk and Ayesha Curry—the decision to cast Khan, who wears a headscarf, isn't only history making (she's the first hijab-wearing woman to be featured in a major mainstream hair ad), it's also a step toward correcting a common misconception.
“How many brands are doing things like this? Not many. They’re literally putting a girl in a headscarf—whose hair you can’t see—in a hair campaign. Because what they’re really valuing through the campaign is the voices that we have,” Khan told Vogue UK this week. “You have to wonder—why is it presumed that women who don’t show their hair don’t look after it? The opposite of that would be that everyone that does show their hair only looks after it for the sake of showing it to others. And that mindset strips us of our autonomy and our sense of independence. Hair is a big part of self-care.”
In an industry where the definition of what it means to be beautiful has been markedly thin, this is a huge deal. Not only is L'Oréal saying to women and girls who wear hijab that they're seen—the theme of the campaign is self-worth over self-doubt—but that how they are seen doesn't define who they are. As Khan pointed out to Vogue UK, whether or not her hair is visible in public, how it looks and feels still matters to her: “For me, my hair is an extension of my femininity. I love styling my hair, I love putting products in it, and I love it to smell nice. It’s an expression of who I am."
What do you think of this guys? WB the British-Pakistani, but I think this is crazy SJW crap...
This is simply advertising companies appealing to the epidemic of narcissism in the West. Particularly note the following phrases:
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Appealing to all of us, i.e. appealing to me.
- [My hair, even if invisible]
is an expression of who I am.
Dove was doing this with the beauty sketches bullshit, and then the low 5s and fatasses in white undies thing.
https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2013/05/dove.html
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"Dude, are you doing the Dove ad now? That was so April 15th...?" Yes, I realize I missed the meme train, but it's better to be right than part of the debate, especially when there is no debate, this is all a short con inside a 50+ year long con. Remember House Of Games? "It's called a confidence game. Why, because you give me your confidence? No: because I give you mine."
"What's with you and fin-de-Reagan David Mamet?" It's not my fault Dove cast Joe Mantegna as the sketch artist, and anyway if you want to understand the world today, you have to understand how the Dumbest Generation of Narcissists In The History Of The World was educated. See also: 9 1/2 Weeks.
Here's how you run a short con, pay attention:
Everyone likes to know the secrets of the game, and this scene certainly satisfies. Joe Mantagena shows a famous psychiatrist (played, tellingly, by David Mamet's future ex-wife) how a short con is done, how it's improvised, and he makes it look so easy. Really easy, except for the part where you have to connect with a perfect stranger and make them like you. Did you find yourself wondering if you had the skills to pull it off? Better watch it again, sucker.
Quick test for a con: what questions does it not occur to you to ask? While you were memorizing the language and the pacing of the scam, you didn't ask yourself, why didn't Mantegna take that guy's money at the end? Why did he let him off the hook? "He was just doing it as an example." Oh, like when a guy says he'll put in just the tip, "I want to see if it fits"? It's not like the psychiatrist doesn't know he's a thief-- that's why they were there in the first place. So he purposely didn't steal the money to make the psychiatrist feel at ease, feel closer to him. To earn her confidence by first giving her his. She's the mark. The aborted short con is part of an unseen long con.
But the genius of the scene is that while you, the viewer, are criticizing the stilted dialogue or the improbability of the success, "dude, that would never work in real life!" if you search your sclerotic heart you will find that you yourself felt good that Mantegna didn't take that guy's money, that he let him go. It endeared you to Joe, it made you feel more sympathetic to him, like he's an ethical thief, like he's Lawful Neutral. In other words, he's given you his confidence.... which means that the true mark is you.
The gimmick that propels the Dove ad is a comparison between subjectivity and objectivity, though in this case objectivity is defined as however well Mantegna can use a charcoal pencil. Why not just use a photograph?
Because when it comes to beauty, we all know photographs can be manipulated, especially in ads, especially by Dove. So the ad frees you from your cynicism and goes with a new standard of beauty, one that, like yoga or genetics, has been around for a long time AND you know very little about it; it hasn't been over-critiqued, you haven't watched it fail over and over, and thus seems pure, fantastical, true. The artist's sketch. How can anything this lovingly and precisely created not be the real thing? And nothing makes a middle aged neurotic happier than 45 minutes alone in a loft with a good looking man who requires no sexual contact and just wants to listen to you talk about yourself, unless he's also sketching you attentively in natural light. "Can I offer you a Pinot Grigio?" Slow down, Christian, you're making me woozy. There is not enough quantitative easing in the universe to prop up this fantasy, but at $3000000000000 you can't say America's not committed to the attempt.
The mistake in interpreting this ad is in assuming the ad is selling based on the women and their beauty. If that were true, it would be counterproductive: if they are naturally beautiful, if the problem is actually a psychological one, then they certainly don't need any beauty products. A beauty ad operates by creating a gap between you and an ideal: by creating an anxiety that can only be mitigated by the product. But this ad reduces anxiety and avoids cynicism. Therefore, it is not a beauty products ad. It is selling something else. This is why there aren't any products in the ad.
Dove is telling you you don't need to do anything to be beautiful, but it knows full well women must do something to themselves to feel good about themselves, and if they don't need makeup then at least a moisturizing soap. All Dove needs to solidify this is to be recognized as an authority on beauty-- real beauty, not fake, Photoshopped, eyeliner and pushup bras beauty.
Do you see? We're about five years on from the Dove ad, but the message is still the same. If Dove/Loreal (It's basically all Proctor & Gamble, but we'll leave that for another day) gets you to accept it as the authority on what's beautiful and what's not, you will use it to make yourself feel beautiful. Americans brand themselves, it's part of their particular approach to narcissism, and Loreal is just trying to get in a woman's head as a good guy. That's what it wants: brand recognition and to associate a feeling with its products. That's the whole point of the chintzy "BUT SHE CAN'T SHOW HER HAIR!" - that's how they got your attention, and that's how you become the mark.
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This is the same problem with people who want to ban Photoshopping in magazines or want bigger women to be featured in ads. You all have the internet, right? It seems crazy to worry about how beauty is portrayed on TV and ads when there are blonde billions (rated on a scale of one to ten) getting double penetrated literally underneath your gmail window, but that obsessive worry about what's on TV or what's in an ad is completely predicated on the assumption that the ad, the media, has all the power to decide what's desirable. And therefore, of course, it does. But the important point is not that you believe this to be true, the point is that you want this to be true. You want it to be true that advertising sets the standard of beauty because in the insane calculus of your psychology you have a better chance of changing Dove than you have of changing yourself, turns out that's true as well.
Dove, et al sympathize with your powerlessness, so since you can't get anywhere near those impossible standards, ads give you a chance of making some kind of progress: a little moisturizing soap and a positive message and maybe you get closer to the aspirational images of the women in the ad. "Those women are aspirational?" Of course: they're happy, Dad told them they're good. It feels like improvement, it feels like change, and I hope by now you understand it's only a defense against change.
The obvious retort is that ads are everywhere, you can't ignore them. But there are rats in the ceiling of your favorite restaurant, and you ignore them no problem, you don't even look up. That's the real Matrix you make for yourself continuously, in analog, not digital-- overestimate this, disavow that, a constant transduction of reality into a safe hue of green, until by the time you get to bed you're physically exhausted but your brain can't downshift. "I have insomnia." Time for a Xanax. Yes, it's Blue.
"Everybody gets something out of every transaction," said Joe, explaining why people want to be conned. That's what ads do for you. They'll let you complain that they are telling you what to want, as long as you let them tell you how to want.
"Shouldn't my parents have taught me how to want, instead of yelling at me about what to want?" You'd think that, let's check in: have you shown this ad to your 14 year old daughter yet? Oh, you sent it to her on Facebook, that was helpful. What did you tell her about the ad? "Well, even though it's an ad and they're trying to sell you Dove soap, there's a positive message in it." No other ways to deliver positive messages? "Well, the ad is really well made, and it communicates the message more powerfully than I ever could." But if the medium is the message, shouldn't you NOT show her this ad?
David Mamet has some excellent insights, but for practice what you preach wisdom you have to defer to a Wachowski sister: stop letting the Matrix tell you who you are.
I'm discovering Taleb's antifragility has this from another angle: we are overdosing on information. The Matrix will blast you with insignificant information for as long as it possibly can, and mathematically maybe 5% of it matters. Literally 5%. Therefore, the best way to stop the Matrix telling you who you are, the best way to retake control of your life, is still the old argument from War Games: the only way to win is not to play.
Remissas, discite, vivet.
God save us from people who mean well. -storm