Small Strokes Big Oaks

I strongly believe that it is just as important to discuss how men appear in advertising as it is to discuss how women appear in advertising.  Men suffer from body image issues just as women do, often as a direct result of the bombardment of images from the media.  You’ve got your total binary here: men in commercials, movies, and TV shows are either super awesome ladies’ men with washboard abs and sweet sports cars or doofy husbands incapable of doing much of anything.  (Just like women are either super-skinny models or nagging, never-happy wives.)  Don’t take my word for it!  Check out Sarah Haskins below:

So, as much as I have learned about Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty, and as much as I now understand that their motives are not all together pure, I do also understand the need for images of real women AND men in the media, which is why I was a little bit happy to see that Dove is planning on adding men to their Real Beauty campaign.

Yes, Unilever is not a great company and, yes, they still produce those ridiculous Axe commercials with women seemingly magnetized to the guy wearing the Axe spray.  And yes, all of those guys in that picture are white and middle-aged.  But isn’t this a step in the right direction?  Any campaign that touts self-esteem in relation to body image should include women as well as men.