Getting Heavy

Dove Ads Are Fat on Pounds, Light on Message

BY EMILY SELTZER

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Illustration by Thyra Heder
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We live in a culture saturated with conflicting conceptions of body, diet and exercise. Yet advertising is relatively consistent—tall and thin is the rule. So when average and larger-sized models appeared in ads created by Dove soap this summer, it was difficult not to notice.

Breaking the supermodel mold in advertising isn't new. In 2002, The Body Shop debuted an ad campaign featuring Ruby, a "Rubenesque," plus-size, doll. The campaign attracted a good deal of media attention, including cries from Mattel that Ruby detracted from Barbie's decades-old appeal. Today, however, the campaign is forgotten and The Body Shop is no longer associated with their stereotype-breaking message

This summer, Dove created a similar media buzz with its ads featuring models from size four to 12, in their underwear. A campaign from Nike, consisting of close-ups of athletic women's body parts accompanied by copy glorifying these muscular "thunder thighs" and "bubble butts," followed quickly behind. Together, these campaigns inspired articles in almost every major newspaper. As the media attention fades this fall, the Dove and Nike campaigns seem to be heading for the same politically correct graveyard where Ruby was buried.

Though these campaigns make an interesting topic for water-cooler conversation, and may give some women a momentary boost in self-esteem, their effect is short-lived and superficial. Americans are increasingly concerned with being thin, and ads showing hefty bodies are just a passing distraction from their diets and workout routines. In 2005, advertising that attempts to break dominant body stereotypes is too little, too late. In many ways, women today are entering an era beyond the body-image crises of the nineties: politically correct efforts like Dove's ring as hollow corporate ploys, and concerns about health and obesity have begun to trump unconditional acceptance of overweight or even average bodies.

Cellulite Anti-Heroes

The copy on the Dove website states idealistically, "For too long, beauty has been defined by narrow, stifling stereotypes. You've told us it's time to change all that." Dove's campaign was launched in response to a study conducted by the company that found that most women, about two-thirds, feel that the media depicts a standard of beauty that is unrealistic. Dove needn't have conducted a study to come to the conclusion that the women in Chanel and Calvin Klein ads do not represent the average woman. In 2002, the Centers for Disease Control published a report stating that the average woman is five feet four inches tall and weighs over 160 pounds, while models are usually over five feet eight inches tall and weigh around 115 pounds. The gaping disconnect between the fashion and media dictated ideal of beauty and the ever-expanding American is only becoming more extreme. Given the deeply ingrained ideal of beauty that creates this contradiction, is Dove's campaign doing anything besides attempting to sell products with carefully generated PR?

Dove's ads—which consist of six women of varying ages and weights smiling for the camera and displaying their non-model thighs and stomachs in white cotton underwear—are certainly eye-catching. These images are successful as advertising because they are unusual: Americans seem to be more concerned than ever with being thin, so seeing heavier women on billboards is even more surprising. Articles in the Boston Globe, the New York Times and the Chicago Sun-Times, among others, documented the success of the campaign and the positive reaction many women had to it. Yet all the articles were obliged to point out that the ads were selling Dove's new Firming Lotion, which intends to reduce cellulite. "Firming the thighs of a size 2 supermodel is no challenge," the ads state, implying that the massive fat of the women in the ads requires Dove's super-strength formula. In this way, Dove attracted attention with stereotype-breaking imagery while appealing to women's addiction to self-improvement in pursuit of an unattainable ideal.

As Seth Stevenson of slate.com writes, the message of the ads is, finally, "You love your real curves, but you've got a little cellulite? Girl, run out and buy our hocus-pocus cream right now! Those cottage cheese thighs are vile!" Nike's ads, featuring large but athletic women, carry a similar mixed message: it's fine to have a large butt or "thunder thighs" as long as they are solid muscle obtained through hardcore athletics. The superficiality of Dove and Nike's "all-inclusive" messages makes it clear that the real power of these ads is in their marketing potential, not as any kind of social or cultural force.

"Everyone Is Beautiful". Really?

The real reason why these ads are ineffective, however, lies not in the ads themselves but in a larger cultural shift. In 2005, we're seeing a shift from the political correctness of the nineties to a sometimes brutally honest consciousness of health and appearance. Maybe it's an overdose on post-post-feminist "grrl power" or the current socially conservative political climate, but the media and its public seem to have a lower tolerance for the "everyone is beautiful" sentiment of the Dove ads. After the publication of the dozens of articles about the ads (many of them written by women), several male columnists voiced their displeasure with the larger models. "Really, the only time I want to see a thigh that big is in a bucket with bread crumbs on it," wrote Lucio Guerrero in the Chicago Sun-Times. "Chunky women in their underwear have surrounded my house. ... I find these ads a little unsettling," wrote Richard Roeper in the same paper. Roeper did receive enough complaints about his article to publish a retraction, but he stood the party line nonetheless—that men (and women) don't want to see fat women on billboards—and supported his argument with the statement that the media already sends such contradictory messages and uses such uniformly perfect models that the Dove ads are just a cry for attention and sales. Because he's right, Roeper was confident enough to write this article, and perhaps because newspapers are less concerned with political correctness, it was published.

These columnists may feel comfortable expressing such politically incorrect opinions because of changing attitudes towards weight and health. Blind acceptance of overweight and obesity in the name of raising self-esteem is no longer socially acceptable because of the widely-publicized health risks that come with carrying extra weight, and this attitude extends to a refusal to accept larger women in place of thinner models in advertising. Americans are too fat, and, since Jared and his Subway ads hit the scene, awareness about healthy eating and exercise has only increased. Dieting is no longer the realm of housewives and teenagers: the Atkins diet and other low-carb programs attracted men and women alike. The revised food pyramid released by the USDA earlier this year included formulas to personalize your calorie consumption and recommended 90 minutes of exercise per day for weight loss, reflecting a new awareness about what kind of diet and exercise is needed to lose weight in a healthy way.

Especially among wealthier and better-educated populations, there is no socially acceptable excuse for being fat. Vogue has long been the scapegoat for critics of ultrathin supermodels. Recently, however, it has been publishing the struggles of André Leon Talley, its flamboyant and formerly obese columnist, to lose weight, emphasizing that obesity as an eccentric quirk is no longer acceptable, even for men. In the same fashion universe, Karl Lagerfeld of Chanel has recently lost a significant amount of weight, while every article about Alber Elbaz at Lanvin, perhaps the only remaining designer to resist the haute couture body, mentions his enjoyment of food. It was never chic to be fat. But while the heroin chic of the mid-nineties was widely criticized, current weight-loss efforts in the fashion industry are often praised—Talley and his friend Oprah Winfrey have appeared together, appealing to both the haute couture and prêt-à-porter public. Now fatness in fashion is almost forbidden, and the Dove and Nike ads are the antithesis of the modern, fashionable woman or man.

America's growing fascination with weight has resulted in a profusion of sometimes contradictory notions of what is "normal" in terms of size. For proof, one needn't look farther than the popularity of reality TV shows "America's Next Top Model" and "The Biggest Loser," not to mention "Celebrity Fit Club," "Extreme Makeover," "Oprah," and "Dr. Phil." The Dove and Nike ads stand out from this sea of mixed messages, and this uniqueness is what makes them successful. Even as Americans yearn to be thin, the surprise factor of these ads, as well as the fleeting sense of comfort they provide for some women ("Those thighs on the billboard looks just like mine!") means that Dove will cash in on this campaign as well as improve its corporate image.

Political Weight

The all-pervasive notion that everyone can and should be thin became a nationalist sentiment last year with Mireille Guiliano's French Women Don't Get Fat. The somewhat snotty "anti-diet" book is still on the New York Times advice and how-to bestseller list. Guiliano's implication is that the middle-American, middle-class woman doesn't have the correct habits or chic attitude to be as effortlessly slim as the French. Following a few years behind the "freedom fries" debacle, this book puts into print the new politicization of obesity and body image. Women, especially of the New York Times-reading elite, may feel less comfortable with the "thunder thighs" in Nike's ads if being anything but fashionably slender like the French screams "ugly American."

Domestically, fatness is a blue-vs.-red state issue, with obesity rates higher in the South and Midwest than on the more liberal coasts. Obesity has also been linked to poverty—the CDC report on their website that socioeconomic status is a key influence on body weight. As weight becomes a political and class-based issue, a negative bias against obesity is emerging that is rooted in more than health concerns and beauty ideals.

Considering these extra pressures on a simple acceptance of varied body types, the Dove ads are more of a tease than a confidence booster. Feeling a fleeting sense of identification with a few models for a soap company might be nice. But ultimately, only Dove benefits from the boundaries it stretches. For consumers, it's not worth the harsh reality check when the next page, billboard, or 30-second spot comes along and reinforces our favorite stereotypes.

EMILY SELTZER B'08 reads Vogue for the articles.

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