Unbinding an Audience and a Speech: Dove's Answer to the Beauty/Authenticity Double Bind

Western culture puts women in a number of double binds. One of these is constituted by society's expectation that women attain a standard of beauty whose attainment requires much beauty work and its contrary expectation that women present a physically unembellished self. Because these expectations are so emphatically sanctioned, women should respond positively to a message promising to deliver them from this double bind. This article illustrates the power of that double bind and women's desire for release from it by examining a remarkably unexpected audience reaction to a public speech that only tangentially addressed this double bind. Along the way, it demonstrates that audiences are active participants in speech events (e.g., Atkinson, 1984 Atkinson , M. ( 1984 ). Our masters’ voices: Language and body language of politics . London , England : Methuén . [Google Scholar]) and can respond to a message in a manner different than what the speaker wished or anticipated.