Fat or Fabulous?

This week I chose to read Social Lubricant: How a Marketing Campaign Became the Catalyst for a Societal Debate by Rob Walker. He discusses how the Dove campaign for representing "real women" versus showing a stereotypical supermodel has caused a debate about beauty in society. In the magazine column, Walker writes from the perspective of an observer to how people react to Dove's statement, rather than acting as a participant on one side of the argument. If anything, Walker seems to think Dove stand for body image is unoriginal and lacking creative thought.
I find Walker's writing to descriptive and interesting at times. Especially at the beginning, when he describes a picture of the Dove's model. His style is clear and straightforward that appeals to the general audience, subscribers flipping through a magazine skimming pictures and words, not wanting anything too deep or difficult to read. As a female reader, it was refreshing to read a guy's column about the standards of beauty movement. And in certain respects, I liked how short the article was. It was succinct and kept my interest until the end.
On the other hand, because the length was short, no strong conclusions were made or conveyed. Walker's topic and perspective had potential to be a truly intriguing article but the efforts fell short, probably due to length  and time restrictions. And I couldn't detect Walker's voice in this piece. In fact, he seemed uninterested in the discussion, conveying instead an attitude of writing out of duty for doing's sake. A suggestion I would make to Rob Walker is to include visuals in his column. Since Dove ads are mostly a visual appeal, it could be more effective if the picture that Walker was describing in his opening paragraph was shown.