(Image retrieved from: https://9gag.com/gag/4914001/the-difference-between-victorias-secret-and-dove)
This photo is an original advertisement by Dove. Dove, are a famous personal care brand, operating under Unilever. In the more recent years, they have striven to obtain an image as an ethical company, creating advertisements and website sections centered around a ‘Self Esteem Project’. Although this does indeed make them stand out, as their advertisements differ from the usual conventionally beautiful woman with a made-up face and well attended to hair, and instead usually showcase a group of women, or young girls, with minimal to no makeup, I do not buy into their ‘wholesome’ and ‘just’ image. Taking the image above, we can see that the advertisement is trying to promote diversity; I say ‘trying’ as I believe it is not successful to the analytical eye, and instead demonstrates a seemingly false, superficial sense of diversity. Firstly, in the photo there appear to be three black women and one possibly mixed race woman, as opposed to the numerous other white women, this is not diversity. I would imagine diversity would entail at least a fifty -fifty split between Caucasian women and coloured, Asian or mixed women. So to me this sends the message that they believe ethnic variety is not beautiful, and that a white dominance is. Another issue I would like to draw upon is body shaming of women. Nowadays, there are many instances of this politically correct culture taking things too far, for instance people seeing the ‘black lives matter’ campaign as a black elite campaign rather than indicating all lives matter. In this advertisement I see this fight in terms of the lack of skinny or more slender women. There is now a movement, perhaps not the most dominant but still significant, ruling lean women as being unhealthy and starving, and heavier, fatter, women as being healthy and natural. In the above photo, most of the women are fuller and heftier, which as health indicates isn’t always a good thing (of course your size largely depends on your natural body type). This could also be an implied message with their use of the word ‘real’ as suggesting that it is not natural or authentic to be slim or skinny. So again, I believe they are using heavier models, alongside a token collection of coloured models, to make it seem as if they believe variety is beautiful. Interestingly enough, just this week Dove have made the news for a commercial of a black woman switching into a white woman, which many people viewed as being racist. I chose this advertisement before this news broke, so perhaps there is indeed a racial problem behind Dove’s marketing campaigns.
In this new manipulated version of the advertisement, all I did was add in one word. I believe that this is a simple yet effective word, which demonstrates the falsity of the utopian world they are attempting to paint with this photo. To me tokenism means using one symbol, or perhaps a few, which explicitly stand out in order to be noticed by our senses, in the hopes of creating an image of equality and fairness within a society, or in this case an advertisement. Within the white women you can see a progressive diversion; there are two redhead’s, a blonde, some paler white women, and some more olive toned white women. By looking at the black women, you can immediately see that they are completely different shades of brown; there is an ebony brown woman, a medium brown woman, and one who is perhaps a warm tan. To me this seems like a very forcible presentation with the aim of creating audience feelings of Dove being a company which accepts and promotes of all types of beauty- tokenism. An additional thing to note is that despite variations in skin colour and races, the women aren’t that different. For instance, they all appear around the same height, with similar body types and all adorning straight hair that is medium in length- apart from the lady on the far right with braids. This indicates that they are really trying to sell to a particular type of women, and thus they are not interested in the more skinny, or perhaps more masculine looking gender-fluid women of the world.
Another point of mine to consider is that the campaign must be implying these women aren’t typically beautiful otherwise they wouldn’t see the women on the cover as portraying their message of ‘true beauty’, yet further fitting into my word of ‘Toeknism’. I believe it is of importance to analyse the media we experience, like in the Dove advertisement, as our roles in a media rich society where we can not only view content but create our own, allows us to have more of an active role in determining what media is being produced and with what kinds of messages and values. Earlier I briefly mentioned the recent Dove sandal, which clearly demonstrates the active part we all have in information and media today; as it is an advertisement making the news because we the consumers are not liking the message it seems to be communicating. Something less abstract to focus on within this photo is also the use of the colour white- for both the background and the garments on the women. White is seen as a pure colour, and thus this further reinstates Dove trying to get consumers to see them as a simple, pure and wholesome company. As per my argumentative points, I do not agree with this, nevertheless I didn’t edit out this colour as I believe the word ‘Tokenism’ sharply disrupts this desired illusion of purity and truth.
Works cited (MLA):
“Our mission.” Dove UK, Dove, 11 Jan, 2016. www/dove/com/ca/en/dove-self-esteem-project/our-mission.html.
“The difference between Victoria’s Secret and Dove.” 9GAG, 31 July 2012. 9gag.com/gag/4914001/ the-difference-between-victorias-secret-and-dove.