Аннотация:This article examines the cause branding strategy of The Dove Campaign for Real Beauty (CFRB) as a case study in the production and consumption of contemporary popular meanings of feminism, social change, female citizenship, and female beauty in global consumer culture. A feminist semiotic analysis of the print, television, and new media texts that launched CFRB and its brand extensions reveals a juxtaposition in its "real beauty" messaging: signs reference a key opposition in feminist politics (liberation and oppression) while dictating a beauty ideology that encompasses appearance and behavior. Further, the texts situate the brand as the site for female activism about the dominant ideology of beauty; this strategy positions the corporation to usurp the feminist role of engendering social change for women and displaces the influential mentoring role away from women who share girls' everyday lives onto an agent of institutional power. Finally, the author argues that this postfeminist-supported campaign encourages the global spread of and individuals' enlistment in postfeminist citizenship via becoming a "real beauty" who self-brands her neoliberal identity ideologically and materially in the name of empowerment. This "social change" denies agency regarding beauty, sanctions postfeminist citizenship, and holds danger for future meanings and practices of feminism.
