“It is rooted in the necessary creation of arbitrary demarcations between the perceived reality of the self and the ideal category into which one desires to move. …The categories defining such groups seem to be “real.” They seem not be invented, and thus appear to be quite separate from the imaginations of both patient and surgeon. Yet they are as much a product of the desire of both as any reality beyond them.” (Sander Gilman. 1999. Judging by Appearances: What is aesthetic surgery? In Making the Body Beautiful: A Cultural History of Aesthetic Surgery. Pp. 21-22. Princeton: Princeton University Press.)
In Dove's ad campaign for "Real Beauty" (their line of beauty products), photos and commercials advocate for the portrayal of "real" bodies. Both the Dove ads and the Nike ad proclaim to celebrate images of the "real" women's body. Each image seems to draw us into the believing that these are "real" bodies as the exist truly. Nike and Dove suggest with these photos that the "real" body needs to be revealed and viewed by all (almost as if they are directly responding to the Polaroids of the girl in Silence of the Lambs. Her "real" body lives in hiding of the public gaze and yearns to be exposed). But what makes these bodies representative of what is "real"? Gilman in "Making the Body Beautiful", suggests instead that the "real" body exists as an "arbitrary demarcation" between a "perceived reality of self" and the other. One way to look at is that the images of the "real" body act to reinforce boundaries between self and other and instead of recognizing that these boundaries are social/cultural constructions they are perceived to exist in some reality outside the bodies of ourselves. The consequences, Gilman maintains, of reifying these constructions of "real" bodies is that we come to perceive them as defining the categories of self and defining the need to be more "real".
