The Sham That Is Dove

I just saw a commercial by Dove that has women deciding whether to go through the “beautiful” door or the “average” door. Most women chose the “average” door and then went away thinking about why they didn’t choose the “beautiful” door. It was a great way to get women thinking about self-image, and Dove does some pretty good advertisements to help empower women. Some of my friends teared up while watching this recent commercial as I have done with past Dove commercials, but with this commercial, I felt mad. Really angry. And I needed to think about why.

The message was positive, so why did I feel so negative towards it? I think the main reason is because I do consider myself beautiful more often than not. Does this make me shallow? Does this make me prideful? The advertisement made me feel like I am. Yes, Dove is saying all women should feel beautiful, but this is only AFTER they think about themselves as average. This is only after we consider ourselves average or even lower than average. We must be lowly before we can achieve the high of “beautiful.” I wonder how many women initially chose the “beautiful” door that weren’t shown, and then I wonder how many women then judged those women for being too full of themselves.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t even fit the body shapes of the Dove campaign.

Don’t get me wrong. I have days when I feel on par with the gunk on the bottom of my shoe. I squeeze my side flab and jiggle my arms and obsess over my huge pores on my face. I’m not 100% satisfied with my body; I struggle to even like it at times. After years of ridicule from loved ones and people I don’t even know, it is difficult for me to like the woman in the mirror. But for the most part, I feel beautiful. It’s taken time, patience, and restructuring how I think of myself, but I am happy with this body God or nature gave me. These body-hating days are few and far between and normally attack during my period or when I haven’t showered or washed my hair. I stay inside and refuse to see sunlight, and then I feel like an ugly piece of coal that no one ever wants. But then I pick myself up, I wash my hair, I shave my legs, I put on makeup, and/or paint my nails and then feel like a diamond rather than a piece of coal. While I am aware of the irony of almost everything that makes me feel beautiful as being a societal norm of beauty, these things work for me. They help me feel beautiful when I wake up and cannot face the mirror. Do I need these things to make me feel beautiful? No. I can look at myself in the mirror at my face sans makeup and still see the beauty in it. I can point out my big pores, my Sicilian nose, my almost androgynous features, and while I am aware of these so-called flaws, I am aware they still make up a beautiful countenance.

Therefore when confronted with anything, including a Dove commercial, that reminds me that I am just average based on societal norms, I get angry. This particular commercial reminds us that there is such a thing as the societal beautiful and the personal beautiful. These are two different views on beauty, and while Dove is empowering us to think about ourselves as personally beautiful, what are they doing to attack the almost-impossible-to-obtain societal beauty?

This really bothers me with Dove commercials because they are owned by Unilever, the same company that owns Axe. I realize this isn’t news for most people, but hear me out. Yes, Dove makes all the commercials about women’s beauty in all shapes and sizes and seeing that beauty for ourselves. Axe, however, states the complete opposite in their advertisements. Women are things to be used for men’s sexual pleasures. We are nothing but what men want us to be and what they choose to label us as. Why do we credit Dove for making such empowering commercials when Axe is making such misogynistic commercials at the same time? Dove is catering to their audience, and as their audience is made up of women, they play on our insecurities as this is the biggest issue we face as women. (Never mind that we don’t make the same pay as men or that the government has a hand in our pants working to control what we do with our bodies. Women’s rights are just second to how ugly we may feel in those low-rise pants.) Lo and behold, this is what Axe is doing as well. They know their audience is young men, and as many young men may be insecure, Axe plays to their self-esteem in the form of women wanting to please whatever guy uses their stinky products. Axe can transform a lonely guy into a sex magnet. You’d think Axe was selling Hardee’s hamburgers as their advertisements are so similar and such nonsense.

Yep, Axe is catering towards their demographics, too.

Notice the difference?

Basically, Unilever is part of the problem. We see advertisements such as those for Axe, and we feel as women that we aren’t enough. We aren’t skinny enough, we aren’t tan enough, we aren’t toned enough, we aren’t pretty enough, we aren’t photo-shopped enough. Do the Dove commercials help women with their self-image? Absolutely. But are Unilever’s other companies wreaking havoc on women’s self-image? Absolutely.

So if putting on make-up makes you feel beautiful, do it. If shaving your legs makes you feel beautiful, do it. If exercising at your local gym makes you feel beautiful, do it. If painting and creating art makes you feel beautiful, do it. We all have our own ways of making ourselves feel beautiful, and I can’t think of any right way for all. We must be self-aware and work off of that, not off of some commercial by a seemingly altruistic company that really doesn’t exist. We are beautiful. Don’t feel prideful to enjoy your unique beauty, and don’t base your idea of beauty on yet another advertisement, no matter what the apparent message of beauty may be.

We are never “just another one.” We should always feel like “the one.”

Great Comedian = Funny Book

I just finished reading Jim Gaffigan’s Food: A Love Story. While I think his previous book Dad is Fat is better, I really enjoyed this book as well. Perhaps I liked Dad is Fat better because I listened to it on audible.com, and Jim Gaffigan read it himself. There’s something awesome about the author reading his/her own book. For examples, listen to Amy Poehler’s Yes Please or Cary Ewles’s As You Wish. Back to Food: A Love Story. I can completely understand so many points Gaffigan makes in his book because I too am an “eatie” though not a “foodie.”

If you’re not a fan of Jim Gaffigan or haven’t even heard of him, I feel sorry for you. No, that’s not what I meant. I mean I would recommend his comedy. He’s known as a clean comedian, but I don’t think this is necessarily intentional. He just likes to talk about a broader range than just sex, and he doesn’t have to use curse words to get his point across. I’m not against the dirtier comedians; I just find Gaffigan hilarious to the point where I can’t listen to him and drive at the same time. There’s a reason why he’s known as the “Hot Pocket Guy.”

If you are a fan of Gaffigan, prepare to have some of his jokes heard in his stand-up rehashed (now I want hashbrowns 😉 ) in Food: A Love Story. Like the McDonald’s jokes shown below, he includes much of his stand-up material. However, he expands upon a lot of it and includes quite a lot of new material as well. Despite using some of his older stuff, I found myself laughing to these tried-and-true jokes and filled with LOLz at his new jokes.

So would I recommend this book? Yes! If you’re in the mood to laugh, it’s a great read. Maybe listen to the audio book as Gaffigan reads it himself. Oh, and don’t read/listen on an empty stomach!

“The moment you enter most Waffle Houses, you get the sense the staff stopped caring a long time ago or never did. You’ll never hear ‘Nice job cleaning up’ in a Waffle House. If you’ve never had the chance to visit a Waffle House, simply imagine a gas station bathroom that serves waffle. That sums up the atmosphere pretty well.”

“I certainly don’t mean to offend. I understand that religion jokes make some people uncomfortable. Especially the people who are going to hell. It is my belief that God has a great sense of humor. How else would you explain the appearance of the duck-billed platypus or the manatee?”