The Dove Ad in Life Magazine

Greetings and welcome back to The Un-Zone, the only site on the Internet devoted to all things related to Un. It's time for an update. Consider this update a public service announcement that will prevent you from considerable and most likely, unrepairable damage to one's mind or eyes. You will thank me for this. Trust me.
I was working on the New York Times crossword and the Wall Street Journal crossword as well. In general, I prefer these crosswords as they require some level of crossword knowledge and a certain level of skill to successfully solve them. Pretty much, they aren't easy crossword puzzles. I solved them both in about an hour total, which was disappointing, as I expected a little more of a challenge.
Since I was done so early, I decided to read the Kansas City Star. I like to read the Star only for the sports section. They had a relatively interesting article about the Kansas City Royals, a baseball team that is hopeless in my opinion. The only entertainment one can get out of the Royals is predicting how awful they will be this year. It would be considered a good year if they get close to a .500 record, something that I doubt will happen in a while.
While browsing the Kansas City Star, I notice the Life Magazine supplement. If you don't get it, you might as well consider yourself lucky, as it's not much of an interesting read. The articles aren't interesting. Some of them are poorly written. Their Editor's Picks on what to see, read, watch, etc. are laughable at times, if not most of the times. They actually recommened people to see some of the crappiest TV shows and movies ever. And their picks for the hottest and best shows on TV are so awful. For some reason, they picked the shows that lasted for only one or two epidsodes and were cancelled. Which is quite telling on how good the editors of Life are at picking anything worth reading, watching, buying or listening to. They redeem themselves, sometimes, but not always. I digress.
So I manage to get through this week's Life supplement. I'll summarize the contents for you. An article about Jennifer Hudson (This is something already done by so many magazines and newspapers already and much better written. I might also add, Life is several weeks if not several months behind on their great article ideas. They might want to call their magazine Life, Several Weeks Ago), a blurb on the Chinese New Year (already done already), Oscar night stories (kind of entertaing, but as again, much better done), and some other forgettable stuff.
I get to the end of this waste of paper and then I see the back. Let's jsut say that it was quite an eyeful, but in a bad way.
I'd like to preface that my comments are not meant to be demeaning in any way, but meant to be only construed as my personal opinion. It's what I feel about this topic. I'm not saying that "beauty," "age," or anything of that nature is supposed to be strictly viewed the way that I see it. I'm not saying that certain activities aren't meant for certain people. In fact, I'm all for personal choice and if you want to do something and it's legal, then by all means, just do it. That's all I'm saying. What follows is just my personal opinion and if you have problems with it or if you don't necessarily agree with my views on the topic, that's fine with me. Express your thoughts, your disagreements. It's an open forum.
Dove has an ad campaign and it's all about redefining beauty. This time, it's about age and does beauty end when you reach a certain age. I'm of the opinion that their campaign is laudable. Their message is an excellent message.
I agree with what they say. Beauty has no age limit. Beauty comes in many shapes and sizes. All commendable.
Now, what does this have to do with the following? Quite a bit. I wasn't really aware of this campaign until I was surfing through the channels and happened to land on Oprah. I saw a short snippet and only heard some vague statements about Dove's new campaign. What I heard was the parts about their message is all about beauty has no age limits. That's all I heard and saw, as I had to leave for a class. All good.
Then I saw the back of Life magazine and I am beginning to rethink how good their campaign is. Not the substance of the campaign, but how they are delivering the message. The last campaign, one that focused on how beauty comes in many shapes and sizes, in my opinion was tastefully done. I couldn't find anything that I could object to. The delivery--how they sent the message--was done quite nicely.
The delivery on this campaign, however, wasn't as good. In fact, I think the delivery might be a bit of overkill.
Let's just say when it's oh, 8:30 in the morning, one does not want to see what I saw. It makes one wonder if one is fully awake in the morning. If one is not, then looking at what I saw might do the trick, though not necessisarily in a positive manner.
I will not post what I saw directly as it might not get past any filters (for those of you at work or in a public library or anywhere that has Internet filters installed on their computer), but I shall, instead, have a link to said ad pictures and the TV ads.
I might add in, if one is not fully prepared for what those links will show, what you may see, might be shocking. It certainly was shocking to me as that image is now burned into my eyeballs and my mind and it is slowing getting out. A good dose of mental bleach will get the rest out.
I also might add in that the magazine ad pictures on the website are just a fraction of what the full-page magazine ads show. Just to let you know. Those commenting on the ads, at least on the Dove forum, are, for the most part, in support of the ads and consider them good. There are some negative responses.
Maybe I'm not as open-minded as I thought I am, as I have a negative response to the ads. If I were as open-minded about beauty as I say I am, I would not be so...so...squeamish about said ads. Maybe my standards of beauty aren't as accepting as Dove's standards for beauty as I am a male and this talk about me being open-minded is just a sham for supposed political correctness. All of this is a possibility.

That's all for now.