Introduction:

Dove

A well-known beauty products brand by Unilever, Dove has made its name in their mission to

redefine beauty. For more than 17 years, their mission has been to make a positive experience of

beauty accessible to all women. Dove believes and wants the women of the world to believe that

beauty cannot be defined by color, shape or size. They are keen on breaking the orthodox beauty

standards. The brand is sold and advertised all over the world.

Past Campaigns

In the past, dove has done some very successful campaigns to promote self confidence among

women.

The Real Beauty Campaign was started in 2004 that aimed towards building self confidence in

women of all ages and making them feel confident in their own skin. It was dubbed as the best

advertisement in over 50 years by campaignlive.co.uk.

Another campaign by dove that received a very positive response was The Self Esteem Project. It

was also aimed towards making women feel beautiful and confident in their diverse bodies.

The Body Wash Advertisement

The advertisement that we are taking into account is Dove’s body wash ad that came out in 2017.

Dove posted a video commercial on the brand’s facebook page in which you could see a black

woman taking off her shirt and turning into a completely different white woman with a

completely different face and you could see the Dove body wash placed beside her. It meant that

after using the body wash, the colored woman had changed into a white woman. The ad
immediately faced backlash and the online community believed that it was quite racist.

Even now people know it as the “Dove racist advertisement”.

After people saw that ad, it started facing backlash. People all over the internet were bashing

Dove on being racist and promoting unhealthy beauty standards. And it wasn’t only on facebook,

other social platforms like twitter were also filled with tweets and bashing on the ad. People were

relating this advertisement to the history of racist soap and beauty advertisements in the past

years. They said this was just a continuation of the racist mindset and the racist ads of the beauty

industry.

However, after the video ad faced such backlash, Dove took it down from the social site and

apologized.

Analysis:

Racism

Clearly, the first thing you notice about the ad and the first thing wrong with the ad is the racism.

The advertisement is quite racist. In the ad you see a black woman who is taking off her shirt and

after doing that she turns into a completely different woman who is white and has completely

different features. Dove portrayed that a colored woman turns into a white woman after using

dove’s body wash. What does this exactly mean? Does it mean that black is dirty and white is

clean? After all it was a body wash ad. Or does it mean that being black is not considered

beautiful but being white means that you are beautiful? Whatever dove meant, people perceived

their message to be these two things.

Imperialistic Values

The ad was clearly depicting the color white being better or superior than other colors. It was

feeding into the belief of white supremacy. The ad was targeting a black woman but it doesn’t

only affect a single race or a single country. It affects people of all races and all countries all over

the world. White skin and white people are preferred and adored all over the world. These beliefs

go back centuries when black people were made slaves and considered lowly whereas white

people ruled everything and everyone. The slavery has ended, but the idea that white skinned

people are superior and more beautiful than colored skinned people is still as strong as it was

back then.

Even in Pakistan, majority of the population is obsessed with being fair and being white. If

you’re fair, you’re beautiful. If not, you are not considered beautiful. This is the top thing people

still judge other people on at first glance.

The ad just reinforced these absurd values and beauty standards.

Not following their own message:

Dove’s slogan or message is that “beauty is for everyone” which translates to everyone is

beautiful. They have been a long time promoter of realistic and authentic beauty standards and

they have always tried to portray that people of all colors, shapes and sizes are beautiful in their

own way.

But this ad clearly shows dove’s hypocrisy. On one hand, they preach that everyone is beautiful

and that they are trying to break beauty standards but on the other hand, they make such a racist

ad. So, dove is not practicing what it preaches.