The Dark Side of Dove

Sunday, May 3, 2009

Just about everyone has seen or heard about Dove’s campaign for real beauty. The ads that feature real women with curvy bodies instead of stick thin and noticeably air brushed models. Dove has a special website for young women that promotes self esteem and they have even set up a special self-esteem fund that funds programs for girls. Their goal is to have their message of self-esteem reach 5 million girls by 2010. It’s a great idea and their advertisements are memorable.



While I think their intended message is great and their advertisements are well executed I still feel that there is something wrong with the whole thing, and I’ve found that many other people agree. Dove is above all a body care and beauty company, they sell products that are meant to improve your appearance. But their real beauty campaign is about promoting natural beauty. It all seems a bit fuzzy. You can be naturally beautiful, but you should still buy the cellulite reducing cream because everyone knows cellulite is gross. I also found a few articles out there that claimed that the Real Beauty ads had been air brushed I'm not surprised, although I don’t think they were touched up to the same magnitude many other ads are. I don’t think the ladies in the ads were slimmed down or given bigger breasts in Photoshop, but I do think that they may have removed stray hairs, pimples, dimples, and shiny faces. After all no one really wants to see or be seen on a billboard with a shiny red pimple on their face.

So I’m okay with the air brushing, and even though dove is still selling beauty products they are truly being progressive with their ad campaigns and promotion of self-esteem, you don’t see any other companies doing that. So where is this “dark side” you ask?
Dove is owned by Unilever, the same company that owns Axe, and Fair and Lovely.
The messages from Dove are in stark contrast to those of Axe and Fair and Lovely. Axe is known for their provocative advertising that often features women who are animalistically drawn to men because they smell so awesome. The results of using Axe are obviously not what the advertisements make it out to be, but Axe loves to use sex to sell their product.



Fair and Lovely on the other hand just makes me sick. Unilever promotes natural beauty and self-esteem with Dove and at the same time they are playing off of the insecurities of women with Fair and Lovely. Fair and lovely is a skin lightening product that is sold primarily in India.



So much for natural beauty, and it is also so ironic that women in India and the middle east are buying skin lightening creams and women in North America and Europe are buying products that will make them more tan. I was also surprised to find that Fair and Lovely has their own foundation that is supposedly about empowering women and giving them scholarships. It all sounds very nice, but why is it sponsored by a product that seems to tell women that there is something wrong with them in the first place. It's mind boggling.

Unilever’s brands each have their target audience, and they are all in it to sell a product. Whether or not you find their advertising tactics shameful and exploitative they seem to be working.