Some Say New Dove Ad Is Racist

Some Say New Dove Ad Is Racist
Sites Allege Images Show Gradual Skin Lightening

A new ad for Dove's VisibleCare body wash is taking heat for what some call its racist imagery.

The ad shows three women -- one black, one possibly Latina and one blonde -- standing in front of "before" and "after" images.

The blog Copyranter said the ad infers that the body wash "turns black women into Latino women into white women."

Jezebel refers to it as "unintentionally(?) racist,"adding, "Bye-bye black skin, hello white skin! (Scrub hard!)"

http://www.clickorlando.com/entertainment/28004898/detail.html

Set to music, is labeled as 'Jezebel' to refer to it in a way Jewish people will not like.

I have shown repeatedly that Jewish Heritage is in much music, and even dance.

Can you elaborate?

on public radio some years ago.

Here's one book dealing with the subject:

http://www.sunypress.edu/p-3941-funny-it-doesnt-sound-jewish.aspx

This link might be more useful:

http://www.martincwiner.com/jewish-contributions-to-tin-pan-alley/

I clicked through, but there was no chance to judge the ad for ourselves.

The ad does not INFER anything. It may or may not IMPLY something.

But since this lousy excuse for an article does not include the ad itself who can say. I guess some will just have to not take some's word for it.

The author of the blog infers the racism. The ad may or may not imply racism. This isn't one of those tricky ones like affect / effect. where both words can be valid as nouns or verbs and confuse even seasoned writers and editors. This is up there with using peruse instead of it's antonym skim.

I overlook such transgressions in casual conversations, and surely on message boards, but sloppy usage in written form, where immediacy is not a consideration and one has the luxury to proofread and edit is just plain sloppy.

They ALL look good to me........

I remember back when I was in marketing that it's not entirely easy: you have to have non-white people in every still, but if a non-white person is at the strongest position then it becomes a still "about" minorities. There's all these unwritten rules. But somebody should have caught this one.

That is, the final ad itself is the result of focus grouping, not input to it.

The "racist" interpretation (surely not intentional) suggests itself immediately. I'm stunned at how they could miss it (because it was certain to be seen and commented on).

Like to think I would have noticed it anyway. :shrug:

because the boxes that are supposed to present "before" and "after" textures of skin just look like neutrally colored boxes, especially online. So while your eye automatically reads the text, it is drawn past the seemingly empty boxes to the women, who seem to be the before and after.

Again, no way this is intentional, because if they had seen it, they would have fixed it. This is not good publicity.

racist to me! :wtf:

to me. The before and after refers to the picture behind the women.

moist skin on the right. I don't think it was racist... I think some misinterpreted or didn't notice the skin in the background. I just bought that soap last week and haven't used it yet. I'd return it if I thought that was a racist ad.

had a different perspective by the time i looked at the women.

i agree with you.

On the one hand, you need people of a lot of races. On the other hand, that becomes a balancing act: de-centralize the white person and audiences (even minority audiences) perceive it as becoming a "minority" spot rather than a general spot. And, of course, unfortunate things like this have a way of happening over and over again.

I remember we had a spot for a high school anti-drug program (yeah, I know; it was money). The copy was something like "one of these kids has a drug problem" and the creative was a shot of 7 high school kids. But the creative got there late and nobody connected the dots on the fact that one and only one of the kids was African American. Sigh.

is intended. looked like three women women standing there behind a picture of dry skin and moisturized skin.

without my glasses, the background looked the same. Without my glasses only clues that I had to decipher the message were the images and the words "before" and "after". Given the nature of beauty advertising, "before" and "after" is prevalent. Thus, it appears to me that the African American women is the before image, and the white woman is the after.

vs smooth skin.

but i am pretty sure dove had absolutely not an iota intent to say black women turning into white women is the ideal with their lotion. dove has an excellent record of being pro female.

creative fucked up. The fact that you don't is irrelevant.

would now be saying, well, i guess so.

If the majority of people who reply to a thread here don't see an ad as sexist, it must not be.

considering the world from another point of view.

Dove did the right thing for them; they pulled the ad.

I happen to be greatly attracted to tiny women, so that was my first-glance take on the ad. I noticed race second**, then finally the skin behind them.

They erred on two levels. But likely unintentional.


**Okay, I noticed nearly nude women first, relative size second, race third and what they wanted me to really see fourth.

I would imagine that an imagined slight may be inferred from any ad copy. Therefore all ad copy is "fucked"?

Most people are not 20-20 vision and computer screen resolutions will vary. The labeling in this ad is atrocious.

Of course this failure of design wasn't intentional, but man is it obvious.

My first thought was "Hoota! The owner of the before skin REALLY needs to moisturize more."

My reaction -- or lack thereof -- makes me ponder, though, if maybe I'm not sensitive enough to racism. Personally speaking, if my skin were any whiter, I'd be translucent, so I have to admit to just a bit of envy when it comes to darker skin tones. More than once in my life I've wished I had skin that could withstand exposure to the sun without immediately (an exaggeration, but not by much) turning fire engine red.

i bever sunbathe and am always tanned. sittin under an unbrella, i tan.

you will have healthy skin, me not so much. doestn help i grew up as a swimmer and in az and calif. ah well. but i do moisturize. and i dont use dove, lol

Looking at the ad, it's clear that the "Before" and "After" are referencing the panels behind them, but at quick glance someone could misread it and assume that it applies to the models.

I'm fairly suprised that nobody caught that during the approval process.

since clearly they meant that the cracked dry skin was the before and the nice smooth skin was the after.

It can be racist if one is looking for it and expecting to see it. But it wasn't intentional.

We should just say "whatever" and move on. Too many actual instances of racism to worry about an accident.

It's a poorly designed ad, but not worth a giant freak-out temper tantrum IMHO.

I guess I missed that.

one will be along shortly, for one reason or another.

:mad:

Then when I looked closer, I noticed, oh, there are the crackly skin pictures that says "before", and the smooth skin picture that says "after".

Probably was not intentional. However, it is the subliminal message.

unfortunate placement, though.

Anyway, Ms. Before is the one who floats my boat! Love the expression on her face, too. :loveya:

I mean come on what a s t r e t c h it is to say this is actual racism.

against the tide, of promoting "normal" women and all females, girls and women, valueing self and fuck societal pressure.

I can't think it was intentionally meant to suggest that the soap turns a curvy black woman into a thin white blonde via an intermediate stage of Latinahood, but it's very hard not to read that. It doesn't help that the boxes depicting the before and after skin barely look different on first sight. Truly an exceptional design disaster.

So if the black woman and the white woman switched places...would it still be racist? I could INFER a lot of things from that add, doesn't mean I am right.

Someone should have caught that.

all the difference.

I don't think there were any intentional racial overtones here. Just saying their product will smooth out your own natural color, not lighten it. Still, the placement of the models against the background could've been better thought out.

For one thing, the ad does not INFER anything. Not does it IMPLY anything. The blog writer at Copyrant INFERS that the ad is racist.

The "before" is referring to the dry, scaly skin in the picture on the left.

The "after" refers to the healthy-looking, moisturized skin on the right.

Honestly, I don't know why some people can't find something worthwhile to occupy their time.

Copyranter gets overexcited easily.

...although I can see where someone looking to be offended could be. I will give Dove the benefit of the doubt here; I switched to their products a couple of years ago when they started using "real" women in their advertising. They have a program called "Campaign for Real Beauty" to help foster self-confidence in young women not based on their looks alone.

http://www.dovemovement.com/?utm_source=dove.com&utm_medium=dovesite&utm_campaign=dovemovement82010

"...although I can see where someone looking to be offended could be."

That's it exactly.

People LOOKING to be offended will be offended by just about anything.


People looking for porn are going to find it in the strangest of places...like kids' cartoons.

People looking for racism are going to find it just about everywhere they look.


It's almost like some people make a career out of being offended by something. Or maybe they figure it makes them better than other people.

...you want but I don't have to be fact adverse on this subject.

but only to someone that can't be bothered to figure out that the before and after shots refer to the fucking pictures behind the women?

Fer chrissake people need to get a life.

Probably because -- and I'm just guessing here, but I'm pretty sure it's a good guess -- not even Madison Avenue thought that anyone was SO FUCKING INANE as to look at an advertisement and think "Hey! Uhhh...this product will turn me into a white woman!".

True racism is vile, it's disgusting, and (more often than not), it's -obvious-. But dammit, we aren't helping the fight against racism by looking for it in stupid little things like whether or not a skin product will turn you white.

I don't understand the people that look at something like this and call racist. I don't see just how convoluted and twisted their thinking has to be to be searching for it in the first place. "Oh hey, there's a black person in this ad...I better look at it from every conceivable angle to make sure that there isn't some hidden pretext to racism that might be understood on a cold Tuesday in November when the wind is blowing and the church bells are ringing!"

I've seen this happen a lot in marketing. The creative is supposed to get there on Thursday but gets in Friday and you have to submit the thing before the weekend. I's go undotted and T's go uncrossed.

put white woman in the middle not to confuse people

do we really want to assume people are so very stupid.

And the photog who shot the skin patches didn't either. And the graphic artist who assembled them had about an hour to do it, plus format the copy and deliver it to the producer who was so freaking out about the deadline that she didn't bother to check anything more than "words correctly spelled" (graphic artists can't spell to save their lives, and Photoshop doesn't have spellcheck), "creative formatted per wireframe", and "print palette matched" before she sent it out.

Besides, I don't use Dove anyway because it dries my skin out anyway, and I'm a black woman. Is the ad racist? Absolutely!

(Haiti?) in attempts to lighten their skin, so I don't know how much America really plays into this. In 2011, I expect those of us who consider ourselves women of color to not bow down to European standards. No one can make you be other than you are unless you let them...

but this is all about money with racial overtones. Companies like this would rather exploit women of color in using ads like this to make them think they're not good enough or pretty enough. That in my book is total BS. If women in other countries fall for shit like this, that sadly is their problem.

Here in America the issue of race is still a major problem we have to overcome, and speaking for myself I have many diverse friends and loved ones (black, white, Asian, Latino, gay, straight, Native American) who would look at something like this and would be shocked at the racism that apparently is playing a role here.

So while I respect your opinion I have to say that we as a people, regardless of race, have to get away from what we see on the outside and start looking within for a change.

and saying "You're so dark!" like it's a bad thing. I have to see the ad for myself (I saw the picture but don't know if it's a still from a commercial or what). Dove has been so good about body image that I doubt they'd do this deliberately.

I've had friends from grade school through college and even in the workplace who are dark and light skinned and I never had anything against them, unless they started acting pious and upper crust, which is a whole other story. I'm considered dark skinned and I never had any issues except I'm also full figured and I have many talents that many people, black and white, sadly have been jealous of me for.

If Dove wants to send a better message, perhaps they should revisit this ad (which I think came from a magazine or something) and make some attempt to correct the flaw that makes it look racial and unappealing.

Besides, my skin got so dried out after I used one of their body washes I had to use a lot of lotion to get some moisture back. So it's a question of what they actually use in the ingredients that have me using other brands (Suave is very good, IMO).

their WHOLE message campaign is you are beautifully you and dont allow society to tell you otherwise. that is the very basis to what dove promotes.

clear, because I see 3 women of different races and it goes from dark to light. I'm sorry, but it's a little racist to me. Perhaps I didn't clarify that in my original post and for that, my bad.

Nonetheless, this is why the debate on race is still going on. While it's true we agree to disagree there should be some common ground.

...see nothin

The history of shit like this is very sad and very unneccessary, but it's still happening and until these companies wake up and see it's not all lily white across America, but a beautiful melting pot of many races and cultures, it's gonna get worse before it gets any better.

It's all about the mighty $$$ and they don't give a damn who gets offended.

...putting blinders on and sayin there's no issue.

and going against the tide of skinnny beautiful models to more "normal" models. promoting loving self regardless of societies expectation

surely that should factor into your decision if this is purposely racist.

have you seen there long like 2 minute ads specifically for female self value?

i got it.

I see your point and I agree wholeheartedly.

promoting real women and not the fake, skinny, sick-looking models (of all races) who have been exploited in the fashion industry for Lord knows how many years! I can only wish other companies can take a page from them and promote products for real people and not artificial ones.

Even when I watched an episode of The Apprentice years ago (when it was worth watching), the contestants had to create an ad for Dove similar to this, and for the most part it wasn't too bad. I forgot which team won but at least Dove took the concept and ran with it. I think in this case they stumbled a little bit. It's not outright racism but plays on the notion of it, which is exactly why this thread is exploding.

i saw the background seperate from women. and i think most would. i think that is probably how the ad was created

reading the complaint, i couldnt see how anyone could see implying lotion would create light.... that is absurd

now i get what you are saying, the subtle from dark to light. but like another poster said, put an asian woman at the end, and done.

anyway... thanks for your posts

:hug:

but someone may have a stronger opinion than I do. If there's no issue, cool, we move on to something else; but if and only if there is, then it can be discussed in a calm and positive way without a lot of flaming and name-calling. Let's save that energy for the repukes holding our country hostage!

Wow, this is one interesting discussion and I'm glad it's here at DU. Any other message board would have me dodging the flames and bullets!

And ad agencies know it.

I'm not sure it was intentional in this ad, but if it wasn't intentional, the ad agency is inept.

...when your looking at this ad and thinking that somehow it's telling you (or any other woman, the generic 'you') that black women or latino women or asian women are not as beautiful based solely on the order they're standing in?

Really, what order what have been necessary to make it 'get away from what you see on the outside'? If the white woman were first and the black woman last, would that have worked? If so, WHY? Because in your mind it would be saying that the white woman was the 'defective' one? (A stance I take issue with is that ~any~ of these three women is defective, or that someone looking at them is supposed to believe they are.) If it makes whoever is last 'inferior', then how can we possibly move away from what we see on the outside?

Simply put, when normal, reasonable people look at this ad and don't see that there is exactly one of each of the major skin tones in America, only THEN have we truly begun to combat racism because then race is not important to the objective viewer -- that's victory. When we're looking for 'hidden symbols' that no average individual is going to detect, trying to dissect the mental intention of the order of the skin colors, then we are bringing a light to racism that belittles the struggle itself imo.

If you see something different, please enlighten me. Thanks!

It is clear that the foreground and background are unfortunately and confusingly juxtaposed.

It is also clear that Dove intended the opposite of racism by having three women of varying skin tone in the picture.

Ineffective and confusing ad? Absolutely. Racist? Absolutely not.

Yes. This ad was made by a professional ad agency. For such "unfortunate" positioning, it had to have either been ineptness or it was deliberate. These ad agencies are pros. This is how they make their living.

Ineffective? Actually, maybe not. If it suggests subliminally that using this product will gradually make a black woman look more white, that could actually increase sales. All they really care about is increasing sales. They don't actually care about ending racism. They want to sell!

These ad agencies get paid a lot of money, and very little is done by accident. To think otherwise is naiive.

Find something else to point at.

If it's subtle enough, or if it can be explained away, then nobody can say for sure whether it was intentional.

But, at first glance, it does suggest that Dove makes you progressively whiter. Accident or not, that's what the ad implies. The ad agency is inept if they didn't see it.

Subliminal advertising is fascinating to me. Ad agencies are master manipulators, no doubt about it.

women.

Doubtless unintentional, but come on!

this case Dove is being unfairly portrayed as racist. Save the complaints for some real penetrating racist activity.

...obvious

Looking for racism in this ad reminds me of baptist preachers who spin heavy metal backwards to find Satanic messages.

It you look hard enough, and are on a big enough mission, you can find whatever you're looking for.

It doesn't change how people are going to see it but I don't think Dove was intending to offend. I really don't think with that particular ad there was any way for them to win.

They look at the ad for the first time and want to see racism..

I looked at it before reading the article or thread and saw the background with cracked skin and the one to the next showing clear skin., then noticed hot women in towels..

After reading the thread I look at it and see the women then the words...


There's a word for this by I forget from my college psych. classes :P

:eyes:

...wtf are people who have a since of history thinking!?!

change or invalidate anything that has been done in the past?

How about you read post 31 and tell me when the racist gnome at Dove got his say in the process....

...being used in the past in an overtly racist way.

Folk today might not see it because of age etc (which isn't all a bad thing) but the history behind that imagery is definitive

"....How about you read post 31 and tell me when the racist gnome at Dove got his say in the process..."

Overt insensitivity is an indicator of bigotry, the swastika sign is from southern Asia that means peace originally but who in their right mind would put it an add that says Peace?

and radio.

There's nothing more conservative than censorship.

There is no censorship involved by any stretch of the imagination.

cant put her first cause that might imply something.

i know this is one of the first and only companies to actively promote girls and women loving themselves for who they are and not what society tells them.

so you are suggesting a campaing they have spent a lot of time and money on, knowingly went the other way to promote a dislike of oneself.

i dont see it.

i understand they pulled the ad

good for them, they listened.

Oh, okay. Guess they had someone reading this thread and wised up!

I agree that sticking the white sister in the middle would make more sense, but as far as the before & after of the flaky skin part, and I'm just making a small suggestion, show the before & after for ALL THREE women!

Hopefully they'll listen to the focus groups they hire a little more as well.

COLOR analysis shows no difference between before and after.

I'm more the middle woman with hair kind of like the woman on the far left. I'm not foolish enough to think they were implying I'd turn pale and have straight blond hair. Frankly, I'm insulted someone would think I might be that stupid.

Nobody is ever as stupid as the underlying message in ads, once they stop and think about what the ad is trying to imply. But the advertisers count on you not examining the subliminal implications. They know that you probably flip past the ad very quickly and will not even register what you just saw.

I see three beautiful women of different colors, different shapes, different hair, who look happy. I see a product being advertised as fixing dry skin of all women.

...but that doesn't mean the history doesn't exist.

Obviously, the "before" and "after" pictures are about the dry skin.

Quit getting your underwear in a bunch.

I simply said that *I* don't see racism in that ad. And I wouldn't have even noticed if it wasn't pointed out in the OP.

Geez.

They would have tossed an Asian Chick after the Blonde woman!

:hide:

i say in jest, not to start something. but that would have worked.

One Chinese, one Korean, one Japanese!

Of course, I may never have turned my computer off again! :hide:

not "some," just one.

and heteronormative gender specific sex class objectifcation.

How come no hairy, fat MAN in a towel, hmmm?

I guarantee it'll sell.

demographics. They collect data based on not only race and gender, but age, education, socio-economic and income levels. Once they have what they need then here come the marketing agencies and here comes the campaign to present the best ad they can. It's a crap shoot for most of them, but for big corporations they can afford to say yes or no to the best presentation.

Seeing a fat dude in a towel for their men's care line would be very interesting and probably very funny (if done in good taste). Hell, I say throw him in the mix between two sexy hunks (race notwithstanding), and watch the products fly off the shelves!

important.

StraightStory, I haven't met you and I'm sure you've been here longer than me and the others, but hon, you see what you started? I'm not dissing you but this was one heck of a thread! Wow! Great discussions on all sides!

:loveya:

because the placement of the text over the women at first glance makes you think the woman under it is the "before" and "after". It's not....it's the skin photos. If you have seen the TV ad about the same product you would know this. It's not racist,it's just bad ad design, and someone should have caught it.

I think all the models in the ad are attractive, but especially the latina girl. If it's meant to be racist, the message I'm getting is stop washing half way. ;)

Notice the "before" woman is heaviest, the middle woman is in between and the "after" woman is the skinniest. I could read it to imply that Dove is a diet skin product that will make users lose weight.

some people see racism in everything that doesn't conform to their view

What does strike me ... not one of the women is a size 0, 2 or 4 ... that's kinda nice

panel, and having a post coital smoke in the after.

If I were Dove I would have pulled that ad, made a sincere apology, and run my ad dept through sensitivity training

But that's just me...

and this ad is not racist.
Just people again looking to be outraged by something/anything.

(fill in the blank)."

See how it's dark towards the back and it gets lighter towards the front – one might even say white.

Obviously Dove thinks dark-skinned people should stay in the background, well behind white people!

unintentionally.

And when you do that, the best thing to do is to stop what you're doing and LISTEN to what people are saying. It's only when you refuse to listen and take objections into account that you start coming off as an actual bigot. Edit: I thought Dove had pulled the ad and apologized, but on further Googling I can't find any evidence of that.

I don't think it was -intentionally- racist...but I think the connotation is definitely there. There is a long sorry history (in the US and many, many other places) of stereotyping darker skin as ugly and lighter skin as more desirable. It's often gone hand in hand with aggressive selling of bleaching creams (most of which are really really bad for you). This isn't an obscure fact and it isn't ancient history. I don't think that's the mental association Dove wants, if they really are that conscientious about women's self-esteem.

But it's being PERCEIVED as such.

What it says more about is the way it was made… By an ad agency that did not take into account the perceptions of a population, where racial politics are still deeply ingrained.

As a message, it fails to convey a proper idea.

The message itself is simply about soap, but like pieces of puzzle, a person looking this could see something else entirely and the feedback has said as much.

Due to the negativity of the feedback and the inability of the ad agency to gauge the proper expected response, the ad should be removed altogether. It's tainted, even if it were to be altered.


Back to the drawing board guys.

Outrage like this is an easy way to grab more eyeballs. I can think of several recent examples of big advertisers specifically going for this "outrage" response. It spreads very quickly.

Here's one:



One throw-away poster mock-up, weeks of very free viral marketing.

Yikes!

It took me awhile to realize the "before" was referring to the big blown up photo of skin on the left.