Race and Gender Representation in the Dove 2017 Facebook Ad
This paper analyzes the representation of race and gender in Dove's October 2017 Facebook advertisement promoting body lotion. The ad, which depicted a dark-skinned woman transforming into a light-skinned woman after applying the product, drew immediate public backlash and was withdrawn by Dove following widespread accusations of racism. Drawing on media studies scholarship, the paper examines the social groups targeted by the ad, how it reinforces rather than challenges existing cultural norms around skin color, and the broader message of colorism embedded beneath its surface appeal. The analysis argues that beauty advertisements frequently carry hidden meanings with significant social implications, normalizing racial and gender hierarchies in ways that are often unconscious but no less harmful.
- Introduction: Media, Identity, and Advertising: Media shapes social identities through narratives and symbols
- The Dove Facebook Advertisement: Context and Content: Dove ad depicts skin-color transformation, sparks backlash
- Racism and Colorism in Beauty Advertising: Ad reflects covert racism in beauty brand advertising
- Hidden Meanings and the Broader Message: Ad sells colorism beneath surface beauty appeal
- Conclusion: Challenging Normalized Attitudes: Normalized racial beauty norms must be critically challenged
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What makes this paper effective
- Grounds the analysis in a concrete, real-world case study — the Dove 2017 Facebook ad — making abstract concepts like colorism and media representation immediately tangible.
- Connects the specific ad to broader societal patterns by referencing the near-simultaneous Nivea controversy, demonstrating that the Dove incident was not isolated.
- Balances surface-level reading of the ad with a critical, layered reading, modeling how media literacy works in practice.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates critical media analysis: moving from a descriptive account of an advertisement's apparent purpose to an interpretive unpacking of its ideological content. The author shows how a text can simultaneously function as a commercial message and as a vehicle for reinforcing racial and gender hierarchies, a technique central to cultural studies and media criticism.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with a theoretical frame about media's role in constructing social identities, then introduces the specific ad and its immediate social context. It proceeds to situate the ad within the longer history of racism and colorism in beauty advertising before examining the ad's hidden meanings. The conclusion calls for critical resistance to normalized racial attitudes, rounding out the argument neatly.
Introduction: Media, Identity, and Advertising
The media greatly influences and shapes society's knowledge, attitudes, perceptions, and worldviews on diverse topics. Much of what different audiences know and are concerned about is shaped by narratives, symbols, and images propagated by television, radio, and other forms of media (Brooks & Hebert, 2006). These narratives and symbols play a crucial role in the construction of social identities — racial identity, gender identity, sexual identity, urban identity, and so on.
Advertisements are among the media texts that shape social identities. Commercial organizations have time and again used ads not just to sell products and services, but to propagate certain narratives, especially with respect to race and gender. The propagation of those narratives has gone even further in the age of social media. This paper demonstrates and analyzes the representation of race and gender in a selected advertisement. More specifically, it examines the social groups targeted by the ad, how the ad violates or reinforces cultural norms, and the broader message the ad conveys.
References
Brooks, D., & Hebert, L. (2006). Gender, race, and media representation. In Jow, B., & Wood, J. (Eds.), The SAGE Handbook of Gender and Communication (pp. 297–317). Thousand Oaks: SAGE.
Burt, C., Simons, R., & Gibbons, F. (2012). Racial discrimination, ethnic-racial socialization, and crime: A micro-sociological model of risk and resilience. American Sociological Review, 77(4), 648–677.
Meyers, M. (2004). African American women and violence: Gender, race, and class in news. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 21(2), 95–118.
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