A Procter & Gamble-sponsored website is promoting eating-disordered behaviors to young girls who “use food to provide the good feelings [they're] missing.”

Even though P & G assures us moms that Beinggirl.com is a “safe, credible and private” source for information, I certainly won’t trust anything on the site after reading What Does the War Have to Do with Your Weight?

. . . With half of Americans already fighting the battle of the bulge, and over a third of Americans classified as obese, it’s important not to let our emotions contribute to bad eating habits that will only promote even more bad feelings. Here is some advice from the experts about what to do when you’re tempted to use food to make you feel better. . . .

5.  Post-It notes are great for reminding you of the right thing to do. Stick them on the bathroom mirror, on the inside of your locker, on your computer. Be creative with your reminder. “How hungry are your really?” “Exactly why are you eating that now?” “What will the scale say tomorrow morning?”

Emphasis mine, and that’s just number 5. In Call for action: Site for adolescent teens promotes eating disorders, Rachael at The F-Word reviews P & G’s suggestions and tells us how they contribute to disordered eating. She also says:

Look, it’s one thing to encourage people to examine the issues affecting their food choices, but these are young, impressionable girls who are at the ripe age when most eating disorders develop. If a girl truly has a problem with emotional eating, chances are, she isn’t emotionally prepared to handle it herself. The site suggests professional help only as an afterthought, and nowhere does it encourage girls to talk to their parents or a trusted adult.

The article doesn’t say who these “experts” are, but it sounds like advice gathered from some product managers sitting around in the P & G lunch room.

Read the post at The F-Word to find out how to contact Procter & Gamble.  

You know, I keep hoping to find one of these corporate-sponsored “girl” sites that truly acts responsibly. I suspected that wouldn’t happen at a site like Beinggirl.com, which is

a place where girls can come together to learn, share, communicate with each other and have loads of fun

and

the place to be for the hottest free samples from Always and Tampax. . . .

Big Liberty takes a closer look at other sections of Beinggirl.com and finds even more! misinformation to confuse young girls on health and diet.

No matter what they say, the P & Gs and Unilevers of this world will always choose profit over our children’s best interests.

I write this as I finish off a box of Tagalongs. 

Patricia Diaz Dennis, chair of the board of directors for the Girl Scouts, was recently here in Minnesota to address the newly merged Girl Scouts of Minnesota and Wisconsin River Valleys. In a televison interview, Diaz Dennis addresses what girls have to deal with today in the midst of a celebrity culture: the messages of how to dress and how to act in order to be a woman. She says that the Girl Scouts are the antidote to those messages.

Then how can the Girl Scouts accept funding from a corporation that produces this?

The recent Axe print ads featuring Hillary Clinton pushed me over the edge. I sent the following letter to Diaz Dennis and to Kathy Cloninger, the Girl Scouts’ CEO:

I was a Girl Scout in the seventies and my daughter is a Girl Scout now. I am writing to express my deep concern over the Girl Scouts of America’s affiliation with the Dove Self-Esteem Fund.

I am sure you are aware of the controversies surrounding Unilever’s claimed support for girls’ self-esteem (through the Self-Esteem Fund) while continuing to advertise their Axe products using degrading and sexist marketing. And you might be aware of their production of skin-lightening products marketed to women in India and other countries as a means to “gain confidence.”

And you may have even seen their latest ad campaign for Axe products, depicting Hillary Clinton wearing an “Obama” button.

I understand that Unilever is a very large corporation with many different markets. And I understand that any corporation you partner with may have some components which do not align perfectly with the Girls Scouts’ mission.

But for the Girl Scouts to be directly associated with a corporation that continually undermines the very core of what Scouting is today – a woman running for President will still feel silly around boys — is reprehensible.

Turning a blind eye to these marketing messages is one reason we still have a problem.

Can you please explain to me why this relationship with Unilever continues?

Thanks for your time.

I’m not surprised that they didn’t respond to me, even after a second request for comment. What could they say? How can an organization that promotes healthy girls possibly justify a financial relationship with Unilever?

We’ll continue to support the Girl Scouts and their volunteers for taking time to invest in our girls’ futures.

But not Dove, nor their Self-Esteem Fund. You can still let Unilever know that they cannot claim to help in the fight for girls’ self-esteem while producing ads that degrade women.

Related posts from other sites:

The Antidote to Women’s Liberation
Axe and Unilever strike again: Clinton as slavering brainless schoolgirl
Scent of a Woman
Hillary Sexism Watch (Axe edition)
How Sincere is Dove?
Boycott Unilever/Dove
Internet guerrilla attack exposes Unilever ‘hypocrisy’ of Dove girls and dirty dancers

Brought to you by the makers of:

The Axe Effect . . . Imagine the power of Axe

An Axe rep from Edelman PR gave The Poke with No Name a heads up (way to generate some viral buzz) on this ad that appeared in Chicago and New York:

Anyway, with the recent Gallup Polls showing Obama support among female voters up 13 points in recent days; and given the “lovefest” between Obama and Hillary after the last debate, I thought you might get a kick out of a new print ad (attached) from AXE that will premiere tomorrow in newspapers in Chicago and New York City. Is the “lovefest” the result of The AXE Effect? We’d like to think so.

 And the reviews are pouring in!

. . . a primo example of the laziest, easiest type of ad concept . . . .

This might be an all-time low for both Hillary Sexism Watch and for Axe ads. And that’s really saying something.

Can we look forward to a CGId Clinton doing the Bom Chicka Wah Wah dance next? Oooh! Maybe a dubbed Obama extolling the virtues of skin whitening creams! 

Well, something had to pull me out of this five-day virus-induced stupor.

This is worth another click to the CCFC form that will transport your complaint to Unilever, makers of Axe and Dove.

Mr. Bob Ulrich, CEO
Mr. Michael Francis, EVP, Marketing
Target Corporation

Mr. Ulrich and Mr. Francis:

As a proponent of ethical advertising for children, I never thought I’d have an issue with the Target Corporation.

Sure, you had that little problem with the Target Rounders. But that was an agency’s fault, not yours.

But now: I can hardly believe that you, the Target Corporation, my Minneapolis-hometown Target Corporation, the Target Corporation that gives back $3 million each week to communities, the Target Corporation that supports safe homes and families and family violence prevention – would promote itself by this?

courtesy Bennett4Senate

You see, Mr. Ulrich and Mr. Francis, it’s hard enough to raise girls to become healthy adults these days. And you’re not helping.

I know you are busy keeping stockholders happy, but if you have time, you might want to read: 

Using Media Education to Raise Awareness about Domestic Violence (from the Media Education Foundation);
Dads & Daughters: A Safe and Fair World for Girls;
Media’s Effect On Girls: Body Image And Gender Identity (from the National Institute on Media and the Family); or
Prude: How the Sex-Obsessed Culture Damages Girls (and America, Too!).

If I could, I would return the check for seven thousand-odd dollars that you gave to my daughter’s school last year, and give up all future donations, just to ensure that we’d never see an ad like this again.

Sincerely yours,

Lisa Ray
Former Customer, East Lake Street Target
Minneapolis

via Shaping Youth

UPDATE: Bob Ulrich is retiring. So I’ll cc: Mr. Gregg Steinhafel.

Comments are closed.

Amy at Shaping Youth asked me a while ago to examine corporations who market using philanthropy as the hook (as in Build-A-Bear’s Huggable Heroes).

Generally, I despise any campaign that appeals to altruism in order to sell more product. But secretly, I’m hoping to find something, anything, to change my mind.

Guess that’s not going to happen today. I ran across this great post, There is No Free Rice, about the United Nations’ interactive site where rice is donated to hungry countries based on how well players do in a vocabulary game. I read about it on several blogs.

Now it looks like the site was rigged so that the advertising messages that appear on the page are geared toward the player’s vocabulary — and therefore spending — levels.

What’s the harm? So what if advertisers are buying the rice? Aren’t starving people being fed here?

The harm is that the players – and many are children – are being manipulated into playing by thinking that they are contributing through by getting the anwers right. They aren’t. They are contributing through the number of times an advertiser’s message shows up while they are playing.

So kids will still walk away thinking that they are helping someone less fortunate. What they won’t know is that they are helping someone more fortunate — much more fortunate – too.

We’ve managed to stay away from Club Libby Lu because we avoid malls at all costs.

Which is not always easy. Remember, I live in Minneapolis, home of the MOST HUGEST AND COOLEST MALL IN THE UNIVERSE.

This hysterical post at Daddy Types (which I found via a scraper site, of all things) was written as a rebuttal to a comment from a Libby Lu employee on a previous post.

Daddy Types successfully counters the commenter’s argument that Club Libby Lu is really a saint-like retailer:

. . . Club libby Lu donated an insane amount to St. Jude’s cancer research hospital . . . [and] we have been supporting Girl scouts of America for years now.

This is a perfect example of the conundrum people face when a company touts their “good works” as a reason to continue buying their product.

After all, don’t we want to support companies that do good work?

Another example is Unilever:

Too many girls develop low self-esteem from hang-ups about looks. Consequently, many fail to reach their full potential later in life. The Dove Self-Esteem Fund is an agent of change to educate and inspire girls on a wider definition of beauty.

On the surface, bravo! However, a closer look reveals that Unilever still makes a profit from women who believe that their skin isn’t the right color and from men who believe that their sexual desires should be reserved for naughty supermodels. Neither of which seems to be inspiring our daughters with a “wider definition of beauty.”

And McDonald’s is asking kids to Bee Good to the Planet by making an “eco-pledge” for the environment. But doesn’t that Happy Meal still come with a useless piece of plastic that will most likely live forever in a landfill?

Responsible marketing is more that just another sales strategy. But these superficial campaigns work. Corporations count on the fact that no one will take the time to peek behind their curtain.

Next time a company brags about its social responsibility? Take a closer look.

Action: Support the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood’s initiative to Tell Unilever: It’s Time to Ax their Exploitative Marketing