A friend kindly alerted me to a new ad from the good-hearted social activists at Dove/Unilever.

The video, like Dove’s others, made my blood boil. Thinking that my friend understood my point — that Dove/Unilever cannot both decry and promote harmful media images of women – I shot a note back to him, expressing my contempt for the ad and thanking him for sending it.

He was confused. Rightly so. Here’s the ad:

Watching this, all I can think about is the hypocrisy of Dove/Unilever claiming that they created special workshops to help promote self-esteem in girls. (These are the same people who came up with this hysterical ad: If Barack Obama wore Axe, Hillary Clinton would vote for him.) And that by buying Dove/Unilever products, you can help girls get their self-esteem back.

But to my friend, this video was eye-opening. He said:

I was really struck by the ad content . . . because it actually made me more aware of the problem. It made me think about the young girls I know (cousins, daughters of friends, my about-to-be niece) and how they will encounter all that pressure. My reaction to that awareness was, “what positive messages can I send to the girls I love to counter some of this?”

Whoa. You mean, the ad was effective? 

Ouch.

I originally wrote about the Campaign for Real Beauty a couple of years ago.

I’ve also written about their hit video Onslaught and Dove/Unilever’s message: It’s a parent’s responsibility to make sure the damaging messages they themselves produce don’t reach your kids.

I need to remember that I’ve been working on these issues for quite a while. And not everyone is at the same place that I am when they see ads like these. 

And in that sense, this ad by Dove/Unilever is a good thing: It captured at least one person’s attention and brought the issue to light for him. It’s a start.  

However, I still believe that by continuing to market the products they do and by continuing to create the advertisements they do, Unilever assures that they will continue to have a captive audience for whatever they need, whether it’s consumers to buy products, donors for campaigns, or young girls for self-esteem workshops.

If the problem here really is media images, and if Dove/Unilever really wants to help girls, how about this: Stop producing the ads.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 23, 2008 at 12:25 pm and is filed under Corporate Contradictions, Unilever. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.