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Over the years, the Feminist Movement has been on the rise and has influenced much change in society in terms of female equality and empowerment. It has been at its highest point in recent years and has created the new concept of “Femvertising”. In short, Femvertising is taking a modern day feminist issue, such as body image, and portraying it in an advertisement. Many advertisers will usually do this for one of two reasons: to sell a product or just to bring awareness to the issue. However, the main goal of femvertising is to inspire women to change their perspective on the issue and even regain lost confidence. The ad I’ve chosen, “Sketches”, is by Dove Real Beauty and it addresses the issue of how women portray themselves and the impact

The message of the ad is “you’re more beautiful than you think” which is shown the most towards the end of the ad with the women talking about how realizing their own beauty impacts their choices in life such as the friends they choose, jobs they apply for, and their overall happiness. The message is subtly proven with the strangers describing the beautiful features the subjects originally didn’t see and the subjects then changing how they perceive themselves. Their message is strong and resonated with me deeply, which goes to show it’s an authentic story like no other. There were also clearly no exploitive intentions behind the message as I did not see any product placement, such as for their soaps or shampoos, and the entire advertisement was appropriately

Off the bat you can tell that the ad is professionally filmed and had much thought put into it in terms of how to creatively portray their advertisement. They worked hard to cast the right women for this ad who had real stories and weren’t just actresses (Grose 1). The group of women casted was also diverse, which is important in telling an authentic story as to not look obviously generic in the eyes of consumers (Badahur 1). Dove even went as far as to hire a professional FBI sketch artist, which to me shows that they were serious about proving their message since they showed the artist was a legitimate person that worked in a the biggest field of law enforcement rather than some freelance. The choice in casting was unique and helped intensify the authentic story. If the sole purpose of sketches was to just sell a product, I’m sure that they would not go this far to find different people since that can get pricey. The story behind the ad appears both genuine and honest and is serious about addressing a common body image issue, which is the most important aspect of any femvertisement because “If your brand isn’t genuine about it, or doesn’t understand the nuances behind the issues, attempts to co-opt feminism will backfire; coming across as tone deaf is never good marketing (Fineman