Real women need real copywriters

Now here's one of those instances from American advertising where you just have to wonder: Did no one with a brain review this?

You've probably seen the new Dove soap ad campaign, featuring six "real women with real curves" standing around in their underwear hawking America's favorite beauty bar. Our local shopping mall is even displaying life-size posters featuring these women, and I'd guess your local shopping mall is too, shopping malls being the trend-sniffing beasts that they are.

Now take a gander at this screenshot from the Dove Web site.



Note the instructions:

Meet the women, read their stories and see their beautiful curves.

Okay so far, right? But check out the next line:

Roll over each woman to see more.

To which I can only say:

Oh, my.

One other observation. The point of this ad campaign is supposed to be that women of all shapes and sizes are beautiful, even if they don't fit into a size 2 dress. As the Flash animation on the Dove Web site ponderously intones:

For too long, beauty has been defined by narrow, stifling stereotypes. You've told us it's time to change all that. We agree.

But take a look at the women the Dove folks (or, more accurately, their ad agency) chose for the "Campaign for Real Beauty." All of these women are attractive by any reasonable standard. Most of them aren't waifs, exactly, but not one is either heavy or plain, unless your personal barometer of heaviness or plainness is seriously out of whack. If Dove really wanted to prove a point, why not use women with size 18 figures whose faces don't look like they came off the cover of Modern Bride?

For that matter, doesn't it sort of defeat the purpose of the ad to put the skinny, fair-skinned blonde girl front and center?

Narrow, stifling stereotypes, indeed.