Dove: Real beauty or really good marketing?

14th October 2007

Dove: Real beauty or really good marketing?

posted in Body Image, Feminist Topics, Pop Culture |

I know many readers appreciate Dove’s “body-positive” messages, which offer a much-needed and sane perspective in a world becoming ever increasingly more crazed by the commercialized, objectified, and anesthetized bombardment of what constitutes “beautiful.” And, in many ways, I like Dove’s messages of empowerment, especially the Dove Evolution and most recent Dove Onslaught videos.

But still, a niggling, contrarian voice inside me can’t help but wonder if this is ingenuous marketing, or all part of some cleverly designed feel-good campaign to exploit and manipulate us into Dove worship, so that we will purchase more Dove products to “fix” problem areas of our bodies.

So what if it is, I hear the grumbling. I mean, who cares, right? Isn’t this a reverse case of the means justifying the end? Dove empowers women, women buy Dove products – everyone is happy. Perhaps. But I will continue to doubt Dove’s ulterior motives until:

1. Dove uses the same models used in shilling cellulite cream, to also sell products every woman uses, like shampoos, soaps, and body washes.

2. Dove parent company UniLever stops degrading and sexualizing women as seen in commercials for the body spray and deoderant Axe. Case in point: go to Axe’s website to see the video “Nice Girls Turn Naughty.”

3. UniLever again stops marketing whitening and lightening creams to women in Malaysia, China and India, with no-so-subtle innuendos that if only women’s skin were lighter or “whiter”, they’d be worth more as a human being. Related stories here, here, and here.

Until then, I remain skeptical about a company that markets itself as the bastion of social responsibility, but whose global hyper-capitalism promotes a morality completely at odds with these messages.

I think writer Munisha Tumato put it best:

“Empowerment” is not an ethical marketing tool anymore than shame is. White and brown alike, how we ever allowed ourselves to be convinced that beauty had to be bought in a tube or bar is beyond me. The truth is that empowerment is nothing a corporation can sell you. Empowerment comes from knowing that beauty is confidence and acceptance of self. Beauty is age and wisdom. Beauty is pride.

What are your thoughts?

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This entry was posted on Sunday, October 14th, 2007 at 7:03 pm and is filed under Body Image, Feminist Topics, Pop Culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

1 On October 14th, 2007, Jeanne said:

Unfortunately, companies are all out to sell product – anyway they can. I buy Dove facial scrub because I need to wash my face each day with some kind of soap. If I’m going to buy something, I’d rather give my money to a company that is at least trying to put a positive message out there.

But I never forget that it is a marketing ploy.

posted on October 14th, 2007 at 8:41 pm

2 On October 15th, 2007, Lindsay said:

I kinda go back and forth on this one. I think there are possibly some elements of both the activism and the marketing.

It’s amazing to find out the parent companies. Like, all the anti-smoking ads (the “truth” ones? where they take regular smoke breaks between shoots?) are funded by Phillip Morris, one of the largest tobacco companies ever. If memory serves correctly, they also own several vegetarian frozen foods type things (can’t recall which one).

If we only spent our money on things where we could trace the items back to an upstanding company… well, we would have a lot in the bank.

It’s a matter of lesser evils. Dove at least pretends, i guess. But does that make them better or worse than the people who don’t even pretend? Bah.

posted on October 15th, 2007 at 10:57 am

3 On October 15th, 2007, Misty said:

What bothers me most about the Dove campaigns is that they are so aesthetically UNattractive. Dove deliberately chooses plus-size models who have homely or at least “ordinary” looks (plain faces), rather than those that have gorgeous, “model-beautiful” faces. And worse, the Dove girls are photographed in industrial white underwear, under fluorescent lights, and in a washed-out environment. It makes them look like laboratory specimens, for Pete’s sake.

No wonder Vogue etc. run the Dove print ads. They know that these plain models, shot in such a boring way, can never challenge their starvation aesthetic.

If Dove instead chose *gorgeous* plus-size models, and shot them in a more sensual, aesthetically pleasing way, employing a little of that dreamlike “fantasy” that the fashion world currently reserves for the anorexic waifs, then these campaigns could really do some good, and could show society that full-figured women can be even more attractive than the skeletons.

But as it is, the Dove campaigns look like something out of a Soviet-era East German production of a Brecht play. Not appealing.

posted on October 15th, 2007 at 6:08 pm

4 On October 15th, 2007, KarenElhyam said:

I have to say that I don’t find any of the women in Dove’s ads “unappealing.” Sure, the white and the panties and what not may not be the most aesthetically pleasing set-piece ever filmed and shot, but the women in them aren’t plain.

Honestly, the one thing I don’t fault the Dove ads is the choice of model (I do fault the fact that they inevitably light them in such a way to avoid cellulite, or maybe they’re all genetic anomalies) because the women look like my sister/mom/girlfriend and so on. And, while I’m all for taking down the current fashion aesthetic, I am NOT for replacing it with some other arbitrary aesthetic. Is the world really a better place if fat women are revered at the expense of thin women hating themselves? Not at all. I think an ideal world would eliminate any sort of predetermined beauty aesthetic that the media must adhere to slavishly.

Let’s just toss out the fashion magazines all together and focus on the fact that just being alive and happy is beautiful, and so what if we are some man or woman’s fantasy?

posted on October 15th, 2007 at 6:40 pm

5 On October 15th, 2007, berdie said:

No fat gray haired ladies in the Dove campaigns. Fat young ladies. Gray haired skinny ladies. No fat gray haired ladies. I guess some people – sorry – women – still don’t deserve to feel pretty, no matter how much marketing a company piles on. I think its ridiculous, on the other hand, even a little delusional to believe that marketing works better or is kinder if it reflects who the customer really is. Marketing exists to create a gap – its “aspirational”. If it doesn’t make you feel bad about who you are, where you are right now, it’s not doing its job (i.e. showing you how you’ll benefit from whatever shiny package is being dangled in front of you.) Of this much, I am certain. And a non-comic image of a sensuous fat gray haired old lady will never be part of anyone’s ad campaign. Of that much, I am also certain.

posted on October 15th, 2007 at 11:39 pm

6 On October 16th, 2007, lost said:

re: your comment on my site:

i changed your link into the other category if that’s okay. i totally see things a lot like you do. however, at 280 lbs i feel very uncomfortable because i don’t feel like ME any more.

the comfortable me doesn’t wear a size 2 either though but more like a 14-16 which is what i’m trying to get back to. right now, i’m unhealthy and unhappy (and i don’t have any clothes that fit) = i need to loose weight. ww is my way to starting to change my diet for good = not a diet per se.

i’m not unhappy with my life at all, i LOVE my life. i’m unhappy with my size and like i said, for me, my happiness is certainly not in the junior’s department (oh heck no) but right there with my personal happy-weight which is probably right around 200 lbs.

so i think we’re pretty much in the same page here

posted on October 16th, 2007 at 3:56 am

7 On October 16th, 2007, Curvy Diva said:

I think it’s a small step in the right direction as it got people talking about standards of beauty. Of course it’s for commercial gain- that’s to be expected- but that doesn’t null the point of the campaign.

posted on October 16th, 2007 at 11:05 am

8 On October 16th, 2007, Rachel said:

I agree with Karen – I don’t think we should replace beautiful skinny women only to show beautiful fat women (although, I actually think the Dove women in their underwear ARE beautiful and I don’t think they’re anywhere near fat). I actually like the fact that Dove is showing average women, who while they don’t meet model beautiful necessarily (because realistically, who can besides the models?) are portrayed as happy and secure with themselves and their appearance.

Berdie – I guess Dove reserves the older lady shots to its “Pro-Age” products, although I don”t think the women shown in these ads are average in the slightest. The husband and I saw one of the ads on TV showing this stunning older woman with beautiful skin and gray hair. I asked him, “Right, how many 50 + women do you know who look like this?” I guess the underlying insinuation is you can look like this… if you use our Pro-Age product.

I like Dove, I really do. And I think they project an important message that beauty comes in all sizes and looks. But, I just can’t get past the actions of both Dove and its parent company which so blatantly contradict their PR campaign. As they say, actions speak louder than words.

posted on October 16th, 2007 at 11:16 am

9 On June 14th, 2009, Bring on the student loan repayments! » The-F-Word.org said:

[...] Unilever company of which I’ve written about its brands of mysogynistic Axe body spray ads; whitening creams that promise to make ethnic women “whiter”‘ Slim-Fast, which plays on the [...]

posted on June 14th, 2009 at 3:06 pm