The famous Unilever body wash brand, Dove, struggling to emphasize positive body image, managed to offend its female audience not once, but twice this past year.
“Dove’s advertisements are some of the worst social media disasters of 2017,” Jacob Shelton wrote in Ranker.com. “The corporations that made the list performed “big stunts, with the hopes of appealing to people’s sense of either political correctness, or idealism….”
Photo Courtesy of IOL
In October, Dove posted this shocking advertisement on Facebook. The video depicts an African American woman stripping and revealing a fair-skinned woman underneath. The ad seemed to reinforce a racist perspective that Dove has presented before: Once black skin is clean, it will be white.
In response to the backlash, the company posted “Dove is committed to representing the beauty of diversity. We missed the mark in thoughtfully representing women of color and we deeply regret the offense that it has caused.” However, many are left wondering what the intended “mark” was. One Facebook user posted “I mean anyone with eyes can see how offensive this is. Not one person on your staff objected to it? Wow. Will not be buying your products anymore.”
The controversy reminded many viewers of Dove’s 2011 campaign, in which three women stood next to each other. The woman of darker complexion stood under the “before” sign, while the more fair-skinned woman stood under the “after” sign. Many criticized Dove for putting forth the message that dark skin is dirty until its washed clean and white.
In May of 2017, Dove created a campaign called “Real Beauty Bottles.” The company created six different bottles of Dove, all various shapes and sizes, representative of women’s different body shapes. With bottles ranging from thin to curvy, and even pear-shaped, Dove intended to portray the beauty of each and every body size. While Dove may have had good intentions, female audiences were not happy with the choice of bottle that aligned with each body type. Atlantic columnist, Ian Bogost points out the dilemma a woman with a pear-shaped body type would face, while shopping for body wash. “What otherwise would have been a body-image-free trip to the store becomes a trip that highlights her shape!”
Our Los Angeles media training would have coached Dove to just sell soap, rather than feminism and diversity.