My artifact is an online banner advertisement from Dove. It is part of Dove’s Real Beauty Campaign. This campaign address mainly women, although its concepts can be applied to men. The main purpose of this campaign is to raise women’s self esteem. Dove has been running its’ real beauty campaign since 2004. Previous to the campaign Dove made a worldwide study and found that only 2% of women describes themselves as beautiful. Since then, Dove has taken the initiative to challenge beauty stereotypes posed by modern day models. Their goal is to make beauty a sense of confidence.

The tone of this artifact is empowering. The whole point is to empower women to be confident in their skin, widening the definition of beauty. In this advertisement 11 middle aged women of different colors, shapes, and sizes are portrayed underneath the words “Dove Real Beauty Campaign.” This goes to show that there is no set definition for beauty, beauty comes in all different shapes and sizes.

The campaign appeals by pathos. It uses emotional appeals to persuade women that they are beautiful. It shows women who are happy with different appearances, demonstrating that they are happy in their own skin and you should be too. The campaign also appeals by ethos, credibility, because since Dove is such a large and lucrative company, people assume its campaign is something worth listening to.

When it comes to the topic of identity, most of us will readily agree that ethnicity has a lot to do with how people identify themselves. Where this agreement usually ends, however, is on the question of stereotypes. Whereas some are convinced that stereotypes are factual, others maintain that they distort the personality of individuals. Although Super Sad True Love Story is a fictional futuristic novel, stereotypes about our present world are described.

One particularly important scene in the novel is Chung Won Park’s communication to Eunice on page 72. In this letter Eunice’s mother writes to Eunice to give her orders about what to do with her life. This alone labels Asian mothers as being strict. The letter is also written in broken English, which brings about the assumption that all American immigrants speak and write inadequately. Within this message one can see the stereotype that Koreans are racist. Chung Won Park mentions that Eunice’s father thinks Eunice “is probably with black man,” giving black people a negative connotation. Chung Won Park also reiterates “we are not like American…Which is now why Korea very rich country and America owe everything to China.” This does not only stereotype Koreans as racist, but it mocks America as a nation. Furthermore, throughout the letter Eunice’s mother mentions how her husband is abusive, which can also be viewed as categorizing Korean husbands and manipulative and abusive.

In sum, then, the elements in the online communication on page 72 demonstrate that while Super Sad True Love Story is a futuristic novel, it raises issues of our present-day world.