Dove’s Not so ‘Real Beauty’
Beauty brand Dove are known for their long-running ‘Real Beauty’ campaign which began in 2004 and always features women of various skin colours, ages and sizes on both billboards, television and print campaigns. However, an advertisement looking for models for the brand posted on the internet site Craigslist has shown that perhaps Dove is not as all-inclusive and welcoming as it might like us to think. The advertisement read: ‘Must have flawless skin, no tattoos or scars….nice bodies, naturally fit. Not too curvy, not too athletic’ - which seems to be a direct contradiction of the brand’s message. The advertisement was noticed and soon word spread that Dove showed real beauty in their advertisements, but their definition of real beauty was that it excluded exactly the type of people that Dove claims to support and represent.
It must be an embarrassing situation for the company and Dove have responded regarding the advertisment by saying that is was a mistake which was not approved nor is it representative of the Dove campaign message and the advertisement has now been pulled.
However, even though the company’s gaffe had been rightly noticed and questioned, it is perhaps unfair to critisicse the Dove brand too much. Dove is a business after all which has sales to think of, expecting them use models with bad skin and hair to sell us soaps and shampoos is perhaps expecting too much from any business whose aim at the end of the day, is to make profits. However, it is bad business to present your brand as representing all women, women who would never normally feature in a campaign, while in fact being as shallow as every other campaign featuring unattainable beauties.
At the end of the day, advertising campaigns for products will always have an aspirational element to them; we aspire to be like the images of perfection shown to us and thus are tempted to buy the product. Dove’s previous ads have shown women that are not models and who are of average size. The company’s twist on the standard aspirational campaign was to allow consumers to recognise ourselves in one of the varied shapes and sizes of women featured and identify with them; and buy the product to improve what you have rather than aspiring to a figure height, size and skin colour that you will never be.
In any case, after this minor gaffe, Dove may have to do exactly what it specified it didn’t want in the Craigslist advertisement, to now use models with scars, tattoos and imperfect skin as proof to its customers that the ‘real beauty’ campaign is not just a lot of empty words and that Dove does indeed stand by its campaign message.
