Examples Of Pathos In Miss Representation

After watching the movie, Miss Representation, I have decided to use Dove’s new Real Beauty Campaign. I believe this company accurately counteracts the emotions and anxieties facing our female population in this generation by confronting them. I believe they antagonize what every other company chooses to exploit in order for their consumers to buy their products. Using the vocabulary provided in our textbook, I will define pathos and ethos along with their sub terms to analyze the advertisement. With so many advertisements and companies influencing women of our society to conform to a mold, Dove is sending a different message. After describing the ad, I will then use the rhetorical tools I have chosen to analyze and explain them.

Females

Johnson-Sheehan and Paine describe pathos as, “using emotion to influence someone else” (151). There are several pathetic rhetorical tools implied by the editors to persuade women that if they use their product, they will achieve the same confidence as the model and gain high self-esteem. Design and stereotype are utilized to create a seamless empowering ad. Dove, being a globally recognized brand, has a large influence on our population and the beliefs that are held. With this ability, they are able to engage ethos actively along with pathos. Johnson-Sheehan and Paine define ethos as “the author’s credibility or use of someone else’s credibility to support an argument define ethos” (148). By identifying themselves with the readers, a relative relationship is being formed by empathizing with them. By establishing some kind of association between the reader and advertisement, it’s easier for the editors to convey the

This is a stereotype, which has been engraved into heads of men, women, and children. By plastering the world with models who seem to have it the genetic jackpot, Dove set out to discredit this cultural cast created by our society. Body image, to some people, is the first part of a person they notice. A study conducted by Janowsky and Pruis compared body image between younger and older women. They found that although older women “may not feel the same societal pressure as younger women to be thin and beautiful…some feel that they need to make themselves look as young as possible” (225). Since women are being faced with pressure to conform in ways that seem almost impossible, Jeffers came to the conclusion “they should create advertising that challenges conventional stereotypes of beauty” (34) after conducting various interviews with feminist scholars. The stance of Figure 1’s model screams confident. She is a voluptuous, curvy and beautiful women standing nearly butt-naked in an ad, plastered on billboards across the globe. Ultimately, she is telling women and girls everywhere that if I can be confident in my body, so can you. Jessica Hopper reveals, “some feel that the ads still rely too heavily on using sex to sell” (1). However, I feel as if these are just criticisms from others who are bitter. With the model’s hands placed assertively placed on her hips, her smile lights up the whole ad. She completely breaks the stereotype that in order to