With my jammed ad, I have attempted to expose Dove’s racist, tone-deaf portrayal of what “visible beauty” is. First, I replaced Dove’s “before” and “after” on the background panes with “ugly” and “beautiful”. I attempt to highlight that Dove has portrayed women of colour, specifically black women, as undesirable and rough. Dove’s ad is targeted to emphasize that their product can allow women to have “visibly more beautiful skin” and how did they represent this transition from ugly to beautiful skin? They did so by having a black woman stand in front of a “before” pane, a white woman stand in front of an “after” pane and a woman with a tanned complexion, stand in between; thus, they portray a gradient of “visibly more beautiful skin” from dark skin (ugly) to white skin (beautiful), and this is what I attempted to expose in my jammed ad.

I want those who look at my jammed ad to recognize that just because there are three different women who differ in skin tone, does not mean this is what inclusive beauty stands for. If anything, this ad perpetuates the racist definition that being white and thin is the highest form of beauty, some may call this “white skin bias”. I altered the bottom text to emphasize that the original ad presents the notion that being any skin tone darker than white is lesser than, and individuals should attempt to lighten their skin to increase their beauty.

In addition, I accentuated the shape of the women’s bodies. I want to highlight that Dove’s ad also indirectly promotes that being thinner is more beautiful, as the white, thinner model is portrayed as the beautiful end-result from the use of their product. While the woman of colour is curvier and is used as an example of what must be improved upon.