I am torn. As the dad of a daughter, I know that she is going to be targeted by the beauty industry with GPS guided missile precision. They are going to do everything in their power to make her feel fat/ugly/outcast, and that their products are the answer to make her feel thin/beautiful/accepted.
What tears at me today is Dove and their Campaign for Real Beauty, a marketing campaign they have been running for the past few years. They have made this really fantastic video about the beauty industry – not their first, and, judging by the profits they are making since launching the campaign (sales up by 11.4% in the first quarter of 2005, just after the campaign launched), not their last.
The thing is – they ARE the beauty industry. And as much as I admire this video and the messages around it, I can’t help but feel that the message is absolutely tainted by the fact that it was funded by the very industry that it skewers.
Yet, it still remains a powerful video. It speaks to the issues that I, as a father, want to speak about with my daughter.
But in the back of my mind remains the niggling fact that the people who made this video are, ultimately, trying to sell their products in the worst way possible – by first convincing my daughter that she is worthless without them.
dove onslaught