Dove Beauty do’s and don’ts

Dove wants confident consumers. It wants to break away from the norms of today’s media and spread the title of “beautiful” to all ages and colors, shapes and sizes.

The launch of “Campaign for Real Beauty” in 2004 supported Dove’s mission of making women “feel beautiful every day by widening stereotypical views of beauty” by featuring real women in its ads, not professional models.

Unfortunately, Dove’s recent advertisement for its “go sleeveless deodorant” seems to retrogress from its idealistic movement.

The product’s advertising hook is that it can give women “better-looking underarms in five days.”

Yup, Dove’s new deodorant is doing double-duty. Not only will it eliminate smell, it will make those armpits pretty!

The visual ad for Dove’s “go sleeveless” deodorant shows a woman, green-eyed and lip-glossed, of course, with her hand behind her head, exposing a flawless underarm.  

The text reads: “Rocking sleeveless styles makes me feel powerful and feminine,” which seems to fit with the Dove credo for supporting confident womanhood.

While Dove, in general, does a better job of supporting natural beauty than most companies, I’ve still got a couple bones to pick with the overall presentation of this new product.

For starters, I’m a little surprised that Dove chose “Gossip Girl” actress Jessica Szohr’s name, face and underarm to spread across the advertisement. What happened to those “everyday women” from 2004?

Next, I wonder if this ad is promoting poise or self-consciousness. I thought Dove wanted to empower women, not guilt us into buying beauty products; this ad seems to suggest that only women with impeccable pits can feel secure in sleeveless tops.

Basically, I didn’t realize my underarms were supposed to be sexy until I saw Dove’s new ads.

Perhaps Dove really is just trying to cater to the public’s needs, but from my angle, it looks like the only aim of advertising, Dove included, is to create arbitrary insecurities in women.

An “Uncovering Underarms” study conducted in part by Unilever  (the corporation that owns Dove ) was the supposed prompt for this “go sleeveless” product. I think it has some biased results.

Mike Dwyer, U.S. marketing director for Unilever’s deodorant business told the Wall Street Journal that in the company’s survey of more than 500 women, nearly all said they find their underarms unattractive.

Sixty-two percent of the surveyed woman reported underarm skin problems like breakouts, discoloration or itchiness.

I understand why companies and consumers want moisturizers added to their deodorants, but can we really believe that legitimate skin issues can be solved without a prescription?

Sorry, Dove, but I have my doubts. If I’m that self-conscious about my armpits, or if they’re breaking out in hives or something, I’ll skip the convenience store aisles and go straight to the doctor’s office.

­— paihenry@indiana.edu