Beauty contests in Universities

Should an academic institution like university be involved in events such as beauty pageants? Beauty pageants or beauty contests are competitions mainly based on the physical beauty of its contestants, although such contests often incorporate personality, talent, and answers to judges' questions as judged criteria. The majority of them are for women.

Beauty pageants reinforce the idea that women are only of value according to their attractiveness and they reduce women to objects to be judged and compared on the basis of their appearance.

Here are some videos showing one Miss University London event and two TV shows talking about this subject.

Some statistics related to sex object culture

• Over half (54%) of all women around the world say they first became aware of the need to be physically attractive between 6 and 17 years of age ₍₁₎
• Eating disorders are as common amongst women as autism ₍₂₎
• 66% of teenage girls would consider plastic surgery and 20% would do it right now ₍₃₎
• Polls suggest that 63% of young women aspire to be glamour models or lap dancers ₍₄₎
• At every End Violence Against Women Coalition consultation event members have raised the sexualisation of women in the media as a factor in violence against women and girls ₍₅₎
• One in three people believe a woman is responsible for violence committed against her if she is wearing 'revealing clothing' ₍₆₎
• 66% of young people learn about sex and relationships through the media₍₇₎
  

_{(1) Dove ‘The Real Truth About Beauty’, 2004. 3200 women interviewed aged 18-64 from 10 countries via telephone
(2) BEAT eating disorders charity 'About eating disorders': http://www.b-eat.co.uk/PressMediaInformation/Somestatistics
(3) mykindaplace.comsurvey of 1,800 teenage girls, 2005
(4) http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/s/161/161338_naked_ambition_rubs_off_on_teen_girls.html
(5) End Violence Against Women Coalition (2008) Realising Rights,Fulfiling Obligations: A Template for an Integrated Strategy on Violence Against Women for the UK
(6) Amnesty International UK (2005) Sexual Assault Research: http://www.amnesty.org.uk/news_details.asp?NewsID=16618
(7) Buckingham and Bragg (2003) Young people, media and personal relationships, Institute of Education}


Sources:

http://www.object.org.uk/the-facts/the-facts

Project Plan-First draft

The design objectives

The creation of a campaign against sexism to help men and women identify sexist situations, understand why are they wrong and confront them.

The graphic material can be created for an existing campaign or a new one can be done.

The target audience

The campaign is targeted to everybody but with an emphasis on young people as their minds are usually the most influenced by sexist imagery on the media. It will seek to be as relevant to men as to women.

Competitors

coming soon...

The design elements

coming soon...

Project plan schedule

Research-18 July

Concept development-3 August

Concept testing-15 August

Design solutions-2 September

Printing-8 September

Critical reflection

Some inspiring campaigns

The Body Shop

Here there are some examples of the Body Shop campaign “Love your body”. The first two make use of dolls referring icons like Barbie but in the proportions of the average woman in order to make women love their bodies how they are naturally instead of aspiring to have the one of a supermodel. 

The third advertisement states that life is too short therefore it should be enjoyed whatever you look like. 

 Dove

The dove campaign, done by Unilever, about real beauty employed women that don't have the standard characteristics to be a commercial model. Although their pictures are retouched too they are much more representative of the variety of women's body shape.

The following adverts have been criticised for considering that they promote the spectator to judge women based on their looks as it give the choice of two adjectives to describe her.

Sources:

http://www.thumped.co.uk/advertising/body-shop.php

http://www.thebodyshop-usa.com/values-campaigns/index.aspx?cm_re=Tyra_JuneSale-_-Navigation-_-values

http://www.dove.co.uk/campaign-for-real-beauty.html

Major Project: Mapping

My business cards for New Blood :)

Bad and good cups

Few Sexist Things In The Media

The brand Lynx has produced quite a few ads that are on the fine line that separates cheeky humour from sexism. Here I post some examples that I consider to be more on the sexist side.

 

 

Greed is good

We can find many sexist examples in the music industry, like the following video where the women are just ornamentation, something beautiful to have around. They don't even dance!

Another music video of many where women appear like sexual objects with very little clothes, huge boobs and dancing (shaking their ass mainly). The lyrics are in the same line with the singer saying things like: you have a big mouth, come here to play. 

The car industry is another industry where is very common to use hot girls to draw attention to the product.

Detroit car show 2011

Car magazine

The world of tunning

The world of tuning (amazing that some of them get to see the car)

Shangai car show 2011