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When Dove Makes You Cry
The new Dove ‘Campaign for Real Beauty’ has taken over large swaths of city billboard, goading driver and passersby alike to deem its images of across the board beautiful women, as fat or fit, freckled or fabulous…you get the idea. What galls most about the campaign, which is the work of Ogilvy Mather and features mostly U.S. and U.K. women, is that, by forcing viewers to choose whether a woman is ‘wrinkled or wonderful, or ‘bald or beautiful,’ the company is putting the very negativity that they hope to suppress out there, thus granting it currency. The Dove Canada campaign differs from the UK campaign, which featured ‘ real women‘ plucked off the street and photographed in their skivvies for billboards across Britain. Response to that campaign, from both ‘regular women’ who posted on their chatboards, to UK media outlets, was generally positive, as well it should’ve been – the campaign was fun, and championed the women’s pleasingly normal bodies.
Dove says the campaign is a response to the fact that only 2% of women see themselves as beautiful. The press release claims the campaign’s goal is “to inspire thought and dialogue amongst Canadians and widen the definition of what it means to be beautiful.” Well, telling the GTA that it’s okay to assess a woman’s wrinkles before deciding she’s still wonderful seems hardly the place to start. More extensive release here.