RCL

Elevator Pitch Proposal

~ Elizabeth Hilton ~ 11 Comments

For my elevator pitch, I want to dig deeper into my commonplace blog and analyze the effects that makeup companies/products have on young teenagers. Based on my previous blog post, The Commonplace of Beauty, I focused on a commonplace created in our society that puts beauty standards above other characteristics through the analysis of the Maybelline commercial. Shifting this idea slightly, my artifact will most likely relate to this analysis, but it will probably be a specific piece of makeup (i.e. mascara). As I propose my elevator pitch, I am basing it off of using Maybelline mascara as my artifact. With that being said, here is where my pitch begins:

“As I hold up this object, and let YOU as the audience gain insight about what you see, I would say some of you may be questioning what it is, what does it do, and where does it go? While others know that this black wand full of pigment goes about 1 millimeter away from our eyeballs, ultimately this item represents the confusing and unrealistic nature of the beauty industry and the common notions/commonplace that our society puts on physical versus natural beauty.

So, why do we trust a company to sell us an object that can poke our eye out? Why do we trust companies that overlook natural beauty, and encourage the use of artificial makeup products to define how “pretty” we can be? Why do we feel the need to be like everyone else?

Well I will tell you why . . .

Our society thrives off of uniformity, yet we still seek to be individuals that stand out, which is why the commonplaces developed around the state of being “perfect, beautiful, and flawless” (just to name a few), are so desirable to audiences without taking a double look.

As I mention these commonplaces, I am specifically referring to comments such as, “Beauty is only skin deep,” (stating that our physical appearances get judged based upon our features) or our preconceived notions about what beauty “looks like” (i.e. skinny, blonde, clear skin, etc.). While we may not agree with these after thinking about them, the accessibility and popularity of using mascara to emphasize and enhance our eyelashes to look like others, is exactly why we support these messages without meaning too. Therefore, when we hear, “Maybe she’s born with it, maybe it’s Maybelline,” we should not be jumping to buy products to conform into a certain look, but rather question what motives are being used to shape our unrealistic societal beauty standards through commonplaces, visual attractiveness/representation, and the development of trust between beauty companies and their audiences’.

So, as we start to develop and look deeper into this world-wide misconception  about beauty, it calls for more identification of where our issues stand to let these preconceived ideas control our minds. With a call for action of discovering better ways to engage our youth into the world of make-up as an art, an analysis of our beauty standards is needed which I look forward to creating.

Thank you.”

The Commonplace of Beauty

~ Elizabeth Hilton ~ 2 Comments

In most daily interactions of our lives, we live off of social norms and standards that have been set and used for years. While these “sayings” or logistics of how we shape our minds to perceive our world may not be completely true, we still fall into the trap of expressing our world through this single lens.

A commonplace, as defined in the Keyword reading, is a reoccurring notion that is used along side rhetoric to express situations. For example, a commonplace seen and/or heard in everyday life is, “Beauty is only skin deep.” While the culture that we live in teaches social norms such as: you have to be “beautiful” physically to be liked, does not mean that this is how we ACTUALLY should be communicating with ourselves and others about appearance and like-ability.

With this in mind, there are a plethora of examples that portray this notion, but a popular one that many know is a cosmetic slogan seen all over television. The cosmetic brand, Maybelline, feeds off of the beauty commonplace, but also uses strategies to send a message that the commonplace is only partly true. If you cannot recall what slogan is being alluded to, it is Maybelline’s famous phrase, “Maybe she’s born with it, maybe it’s Maybelline.” Rhetorically speaking, this phrase holds many elements to engage an audience into purchasing their products, which are all culminated around a commonplace.

Overall, aspects of ethos is the primary strategy used to get someone watching their commercial to purchase their products. While in literature or more formal ways of speaking/writing the credibility is developed by the author, in the Maybelline commercial the credibility is being formed by the company to result in a conclusion that the Maybelline line is why a person is beautiful. Although the message is harping on material beauty in the end (as a variant of the commonplace mentioned above, the commercial also establishes credibility through the comment that beauty can also be natural through the “born with it” reference of the slogan. This initial remark holds a value to the company in that even though they are selling a product to artificially create beauty, underneath the products, beauty still underlies. The overall message between the commonplace and the faultiness of the message is what strategically makes Maybelline appealing to an audience, in much evaluation, or in short through the voluminous mascara that is seen on TV.