Globalizing Ideal Beauty

Citation

Scrizzi, M. (2013), "Globalizing Ideal Beauty", Journal of Consumer Marketing, Vol. 30 No. 3, pp. 311-312. https://doi.org/10.1108/07363761311328991

Globalizing Ideal Beauty paints a historical perspective of women's role in advertising as detailed in J. Walter Thompson's (JWT) advertising agency. Author Sutton observes, “The women I write about in the book were pioneers in the advertising industry […] in JWT the most powerful ad agency in the USA”. This book grew out of her doctoral dissertation and makes excellent use of the Harvard case analysis studies format, providing an in‐depth analysis of what constitutes ideal beauty and the products that back up this concept (e.g., Pond's cold cream, Woodbury's facial soap). It is an interesting and easy read for women who pay a lot of attention to achieving ideal beauty.

The book's heroine is Helen Lansdowne (who marries the president of JWT), a powerful, charismatic and refined woman who helps women infiltrate the patriarchy of the advertising world and make their mark in history. These women (Helen and her girls) created the ideal beauty image that not only supported an ideal version of feminine beauty but helped bring it before the general public in the form of advertising. Ideal beauty becomes a cultural typing that transforms the American female into a set of powerful created images.

The first chapter is “the story of the all‐female department at J. Walter Thompson – women who created famous campaigns that revolutionized advertising and exported American ideals of the feminine around the globe“ (p. 15). Called “From Suffrage to Soap”, it deals with feminism, suffrage and consumer culture.

Chapter 2, “Good Looks Supremacy”, advocates that all women, regardless of color, race, or ethnicity, fall captive to the seductions of shared identify found in consumer culture. “If people of color ruled the world, white people would curl their hair and darken their skin” (p. 45), according to Chandler Owen, editor of The Messenger. In the last century, the modern woman was scrubbed, glowing, deodorized, cosmeticized and youthful. Today's 2012 woman is highly sexualized, wrinkle‐free, silicone injected, and anorexic. These characteristics make her “beautiful”.

Chapter 3 deals with “Selling Prestige and Whiteness”. How well did Lansdowne and her girls affect the industry? It is estimated today that every second of every hour somewhere in the world a woman is buying a Pond's product (p. 67). The ad agency unfolded a new wave of woman to become the ideal beauty. Along with it virtues and values became paramount: “marriage, patriotism, whiteness, duty to family, and heterosexuality”, to name a few (p. 96).

Chapter 4, “Selling Sex and Science”, advocates the age‐old cliché “Sex sells!”. It examines the ad campaign for Woodbury Soap, which promoted “A Skin You Love to Touch”: “The display made the message graphic and visual. Consumers would gain beautiful, smooth skin that a distinguished white man would love to touch” (p. 112).

Readers of this book will come away with the perspective that, historically, advertising by JWT was geared to the well‐to‐do white race. My one concern with this book, then, is it that the audience is limited due to the fact that Ms Sutton's research is primarily focused on the white female: “the photograph shows a young white woman lying on her stomach next to a reflecting pool. One arm is under her head and the other dangles gracefully down to the water, tips of fingers grazing the surface of the pool. It seems to be a time of peaceful contemplation. This ad also promises the benefits of filtered sunshine through scientific advancements. And the images imply that those benefits are a beautiful, desirable body with blemish‐free fair skin” (p. 115).

The last section of the book, and the longest, deals with J. Walter Thompson's International Expansion and advancements. There is a “universal appeal to beauty, those qualities of femininity which provide the basic common denominator for our advertising and sales” (JWT Archives, 1961, p. 14). Pond's sales domestically and globally substantiate this claim. It seems that women all over the globe share the same codes of femininity referred to in the beginning of this section.

An article in The Economist in 2003 stated that Americans spend more each year on beauty than they do on education. In 2012 one can only imagine that this concept of ideal beauty portrayed by The Economist changes dramatically as education has sky‐rocketed above and beyond what anyone expected it to do. Think of tuition to attend a college like Boston University where the cost is over $50,000 a year!

The last section of the book, and the longest, deals with J. Walter Thompson's International Expansion and advancements. There is a “universal appeal to beauty, those qualities of femininity which provide the basic common denominator for our advertising and sales” (TW Archives, 1961, p. 14). Pond's sales domestically and globally substantiate this claim. It seems that women all over the globe share the same codes of femininity referred to in the beginning of this section.

Once more, Ms. Sutton's case analysis approach in her book gives an in‐depth historical perspective of how J. Walter Thompson ad agency redefined beauty for the twentieth century. However, the book would be much more powerful if Ms Sutton brought the writing up to the current times and ended with a futuristic prognosis, which is how most Harvard Business Case Studies end.