Dove is Way More Pious Than Thou

Alright, I'll get things started here with some solid, solid mysoginism, because that's truely what brings us together in this world, right? Right? Ugh.

The commercial starts out with a fairly :( looking lady who's come into a studio to be transformed from her apparently hideous self into a decidedly less hideous-looking billboard model. One neato little timelapse later and Dumpy Mc Drab Queen is a stunning model. Because don't you get it, stupid? Girls (and sure, some guys maybe) drive past that billboard and think OMG I wish I could look like that girl, but I never will, because my mom and dad were both fat, acne-ridden Neanderthals, ugh I'm gonna go eat some Ben&Jerry's and watch Gossip Girls. Look, Dove, we all get it. You're trying to make people feel better about themselves. But let's look a little deeper.

This commercial is hawking a decidedly vague-sounding campaign, the Dove Self-Esteem Fund. Woof. To quote comedian David Cross, that's like "waging a war on jealousy." It's so vague that you literally cannot win, though you also can literally not lose. Smart move, Dove. I looked into what this campaign does, and it turns out they have workshops and stories online and pictures and shit that convince girls that they're actually pretty and not Dumpy Mc Drab Queens, like some asshole bloggers might say they are.

Then I looked a little deeper than that. Dove's parent company, Unilever, is s a huge European conglomerate that owns a number of well known brands, from personal care ones like Dove and Lever 2000, to food and drink companies like Hellman's, Lipton, Breyer's, Klondike, and Ben&Jerry's. What was that last one?

So the shallow, beauty-centric ads that plaster the mainstream media today make girls depressed and they all go eat Ben&Jerry's (cha-ching!). But now Dove is trying to convince girls that they are beautiful just they way they are! You don't have to starve yourselves anymore! Go have that bowl of Ben&Jerry's you've been craving! (cha-ching!)

What have we learned from this commercial? From a male's point of view, I'm getting that you don't have to be super stunning to look like those girls in the commercials and magazines and billboards. Feel like your Facebook photo album isn't very flattering? You just take that picture of you and Jessie and Sarah from the Wreck the Deck party at generic fraternity #1, you know, the one where your right eye is kinda closed and you have a stain from where you spilled a Red Headed Slut shot all over yourself while trying to sing along to "Summer of '69", and you send that picture to a guy with Photoshop, and bippity-boppity-bacon! You'll be on the August cover of Redbook.

Send money to Dove. They'll make things all better.