Dove Shows No Love: How

Dove Shows No Love: How the Dove "Real Beauty" Campaign Marginalizes Some Groups While Privileging Others

Glamour, a popular young women's magazine, challenged young women country wide to note "every negative or anxious thought they had about their bodies over the course of one full day. The results [were] shocking" as a landslide of 97% of the respondents admitted to having at least one "I hate my body" moment (Dreisbach). As women's self-perception seems to be at an all time low, Dove, a personal care brand owned by Unilever, launched a print and commercial campaign in an effort to "campaign for real beauty" and initiate "a movement for self-esteem" ("Campaign for Real Beauty). but, is the Dove campaign effectively achieving all it has set out to do? Is it possible that Dove has not read between the lines of the advertisements that have inundated U.S. media? After careful examination of the commercial and print advertisements from Dove, it seems that the Unilever brand has unknowingly hindered the "self-esteem" movement they intended to start by misrepresenting the female gender; thus, altering the relationship that society and women have as a whole and ultimately, how women perceive themselves in this ever evolving society.

Foremost, though the Dove's print ad campaign showcases women of all races and ages, it fails represent sub-groups of women including but not limited to the disabled, morbidly obese, among others. If a person flips through a magazine and saw this ad, upon first glance they would notice that all the models are wearing white, have tamed hair, flawless skin and fall in a healthy weight range (Rivas). The observed characteristic of these models begs the question, what about all of those girls that do not look like the models- the morbidly obese, the acne prone, the girl with the untamable hair, the anorexic? Researchers from several large research universities put ads put fake ads similar to Dove's showing hundreds of female participants who were classified in categories of overweight, underweight and normal weights. These three groups of participants were shown a selection of images where models were extremely thin normal-weight and extremely large. Hoping for a positive outcome, the researchers were saddened when they found that "overweight women experienced lower esteem" when looking at an ad with any models (Hintz-Zambrano). Thus, it can be concluded that the Dove print ads marginalize women who are morbidly obese as these ads are driving them to have a lower self-esteem. In addition to rejecting a segment of female consumers, the print ads intended audience are younger females, the late teens and the twenty- something's crowd; thus, neglecting younger and older demographic groups (Rivas). But what proves that women of all ages are not victims of self-esteem issues? What about young elementary school girls who are teased because they are too fat or not wearing the right clothes? What about the older woman who has no friends and has a toothless grin? Where are these real women in these supposedly real ads? For the individuals that are not outwardly represented in these Dove ads what would they think of the females bearing all?

The Dove print ads, on first glance, could be seen as a liberating experience for women everywhere but what it actually does is highlight groups of women that do not fit in to the "norm" of "real beauty." Dove print ads were intended to empower and to change the self-perception of women for the better; but, it seems that groups of females that would benefit from a self-esteem campaign are instead victims of the power hierarchy that media has over society as a whole. The commercials are dictating what is deemed as normal or acceptable beauty or "real beauty." For women who do not view themselves of comparable beauty or attractiveness to the models, the impact on their self-esteem could be detrimental

Similar to the print ads, Dove launched commercials that also marginalized some groups of females while positively reinforcing other females for being the "norm" of societal expectation. One of the Dove commercial captured intimate moments between mothers and their daughters- daughters talked about what they did or did not like about themselves while mothers sweetly told their daughters that they would be "their mother as well as their mentor" ("A New Vision"). Though, the act of mothers teaching their daughters is one that only some females can identify with. Similar to the print ads, the commercials do not address those girls and women that are foster children or were abandoned or do not have a mentor of any type. Again, it seems that those groups that would, stereotypically speaking, benefit from a self-esteem movement are being overlooked by Dove, and are furthermore being neglected as members of the female entity. Furthermore, the commercial is implying that all mothers have a high enough self-esteem to teach their daughters to be positive about themselves; though, this is certainly not the case. For instance, a well-known psychotherapist who specializes in treatments of eating disorders with families asserted that, mothers with "unresolved body image concerns and disturbed attitudes towards eating and weight management are passed down" to their children, as a legacy of sorts (Natenshon). How are these mothers being addressed in the Dove commercials? How are these commercials helping the mother's self-esteem issues? Failing to address and acknowledge groups of females that do not fit the classic mother prototype ultimately has a negative impact on women and the generations to come. By not addressing all the parts of whole female entity in the commercial and print campaign, it will have a negative impact on the individuals that it does fail to address. Women that cannot readily identify with the image in front of them could lead to them having a more negative self-perception.

Dove, in their "movement of self-esteem" campaign has indirectly marginalized certain sub-groups of the female gender. By choosing these types of women in their media campaign, Unilever, a major corporation with a strong global presence, has reinforced the standard of "real" beauty, which according to the ads are people with flawless skin, a healthy body, a beautiful smile and tame hair; instead of celebrating individuality- a woman with tattoos, a teenager with acne or a young woman who is disabled. The distorted image that corporate America has created of women is one that marginalizes and drives girls and women deeper into the self-esteem issues that may already be present.