After studying hegemony in lecture and the assigned texts, I can better understand the "Evolution" commercial for Dove products by realizing that the women who are plastered on billboards, star in feature films and promote different consumer products are not a realistic image for a woman in today's world.
Hegemony is the ability for a group in power of the media to stay in power and continually promote its ideology on its viewers. However, hegemony is not a one way relationship between those in power and the audience. The audience, in fact, consents to the groups ideology due to the fact that the audience is so used to hearing and seeing the ideology of the most powerful groups that the audience now considers the groups' beliefs to be common sense. The most dominant ideology is perceived as natural over the course of time. However, Hegemony is in no way permanent. Different ideologies are continually contested and changed by the ruling groups.
We learned in lecture that media is one of the most prominent tools through which hegemony is reinforced and contested. While I watched the screening of "Killing Us Softly 3" on Thursday evening, I immediately remembered a commercial I saw on youtube.com for Dove products. In the past few years, Dove has launched a campaign promoting "real" beauty. Dove's campaign clearly contests the accepted ideology of what a beautiful woman is in today's society. The woman in "Killing Us Softly 3" gave many examples of how the small percentage of women with supermodel looks are the only ones that we see in most ads. She also provided proof of how a magazine re-touched Michelle Pfiefers' looks when she was booked to be on the cover. The ad that Dove created, titled "Evolution", is a perfect example of how the women who are on billboards and magazine covers do not look the same way in real life as they do in advertisements. In fact, they look drastically different. As a result of promoting one body type and facial structure as beautiful, women in today's world are striving to be an image of something that is not real.
I believe that the commercial, attached below, is a perfect example of a big company contesting the ideology that has been reinforced for years by the media companies with the most power.
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