Beauty vs Power

The following TVC's stand for the different images of women in our country. Let us pay attention to the persona of the commercial models and the way they were represented and associated with the product.

 

Pantene's Most Beautiful

The Pantene TVC features Judy Ann Santos, Claudine Baretto, Ruffa Gutierrez and Gretchen Baretto. The tagline of the ad itself, “Pantene’s Most Beautiful” highlights the notion of beauty. To promote the product, four celebrities were hailed as “Pantene’s standards of beauty” in our country. The ad aims to convince Filipina women that to use Pantene is to be transformed into these models: sophisticated, elegant, famous and rich. Basically, the content focuses on the superficial aspects of beauty.

If we analyze the public images of these characters, two of them are soap opera actresses. Juday and Claudine were often seen crying and being maltreated on TV in the past decade. These prominent images symbolize the powerlessness of a typical teleserye princess; always yielding, very passive. Ruffa Gutierrez on the other hand was a beauty queen and the perfect example of the material girl. Finally, Gretchen Baretto is a socialite who's well known for her glamor fashion. She proudly announced her new pouty lips and botox at that! 

 

Creamsilk's Girl Power

 

The second set of ad features three women who are less famous by far, although quite distinguished in their chosen professions. We have here Lougee Basabas, a rockstar and vocalist of Mojofly, Gaby dela Merced a professional F3 racer and Sophie Cottini, an equestrienne.

The tagline “Girl Power” is very much different from “Most Beautiful”. It focuses on the strength and potential of the models. It doesn’t underscore the exterior aspect of beauty: beautiful hair, fashion and glamour. Instead the commercial highlights the professions of the three models.

It creates a new trend of beauty: funky, independent and self-made women, contrary to the star-like image of Pantene. The concept tries to deviate from the stereotypical feminine representations. “Choose both!”. According to Dorothy Dee, Creamsilk marketing manager, it is an advocacy for women to pursue what they want and be beautiful at the same time.

If you’ve noticed however, they used models with pretty faces and long shiny black hair. They were wearing pink clothes too which is stereotypically associated with the feminine gender. In a sense, despite the efforts to re-contextualize TV ads, it is still difficult to totally dispense with these stereotypes.