Real Beauty Equals Real Feminism? How Femvertising (Re-)Frames Women’s Empowerment

Abstract

Femvertising, referring to advertising that utilizes pro-women discourse and feminist values, is a marketing trend as well as a sociocultural phenomenon, which has received noticeable public popularity and academic attention in recent years. Through the theoretical lens of framing theory and commodity feminism, this thesis investigates how femvertising frames women’s empowerment and discusses the influences it might bring. A critical discourse analysis (CDA) is conducted on three Dove video ads: Evolution (2006), Real Beauty Sketches (2013), and Beauty on Your Own Terms (2016), encompassing the analyses of the content, Dove’s company role, the medium specialty of YouTube, and the audience response reflected in the YouTube comments. Findings indicate that femvertising offers a limited articulation of women’s empowerment, where the problem and solution are downsized to ‘beauty’ and ‘confidence boost’, and the representation of male participation is absent. Companies problematize the lack of confidence to sell their ‘empowering’ messages and eliminate products from femvertising to conceal the inherent contradiction. Additionally, YouTube serves as a vibrant online environment that facilitates discussions. As reflected in the audience response, although opinions towards femvertising vary, audiences have formed a close connection between the messages femvertising conveys with the ‘mainstream standard feminism’ in their perception. Lastly, I argue that, through accountability, internalization, and privatization, femvertising creates a neoliberal understanding of women’s empowerment and highlights an internalized psychological path to achieve it.