Have you ever been in the shower, cleansing yourself of the remains of the day only to be confronted with unrealistic beauty standards as you reach for your Dove® Body Wash? Well, dump all those old body washes down the drain, because #RealBeauty is going to fix that. “Real beauty breaks moulds,” this video says, as it takes you through the process of moulding bottles and shining red-carpet lights on Dove bottles.
Dove’s limited edition body washes are meant to “show how beauty is diverse and diversity is beautiful” since “beauty comes in all shapes and sizes.” No, that’s not an article from Reductress. It’s a new campaign that lets you squeeze deeply nourishing soap from a bottle that looks like your own human flesh bag. Or, kind of like your own. This isn’t exactly a gold star example of body diversity. If we’re taking this lazy campaign seriously, you could probably even make a comment about them all being white–which c’mon, we all know that black Dove products have to be for men because touching products for women drains them of their power. That’s gendered marketing 101.
When we saw this on The Mary Sue Slack, Teresa pretty much sums it up: “Who am I, Mrs. Butterworth? Damn.” In things no one was asking for, this sits somewhere between another Avatar movie and every Archie plotline in Riverdale. It makes a statement acknowledging a problem for women and the final message is “Buy Dove,” another example of feminism as a marketing tool. The bottle=body thing is also giving me some flashbacks to the infamous boob-razor we saw a while back. I will say that I live with roommates and the super tall bottle might be useful to not take up too much space?
Dove, what’s going on? You were doing so well with you #RealMoms campaign that was showcasing how there are all kinds of ways to be a parent. This isn’t representation, this is smushing your bottles down and stretching them out a little and calling it a celebration. At least have some diverse people in your commercial and make it look like you tried. This is the body wash version of that Tumblr post about how potatoes are inspirational because they’re delicious in any shape and size.
On the agenda for body-positive and diverse representation priorities, this wasn’t really on anyone’s list.
(via Fast Company, Image: screencap)
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