Women’s Beauty and Sex, They Both Sell

Dove’s “Real Beauty” ad campaign has been making the rounds on Facebook and Twitter recently.

I really liked what the blog little drops shared in regard to Dove’s campaign.

While I am not female I do think that there is one issue here that affect men and women differently and that issue is society’s influence on our perception of ourselves and others. It seems to me that society’s influence convinces many women that they aren’t beautiful if they do not fit the pushed image of beauty. I really liked that the little drops blog post showed the hypocrisy of the campaign. At the same time the image they’re pushing is being used to sell things to both women and men.

I am under no allusion that Dove is doing this because the believe they are doing God’s work in uplifting women. No, they’re doing it to sell more soap. They’re message is: You’re already beautiful so you should be using Dove soap.

As the little drop blog post also points out, Unilever owns both Dove and Axe. If you’ve seen any of the Axe ads you’ll probably agree with the little drop blog that they’re some of the most sexually objectifying of women on TV. Basically the selling point to men is that if you use the Axe product you’ll have stereotypical beautiful women falling at your feet with uncontrollable desire.

So, the same company is using one ad campaign that “claims” to be expanding the definition of “real beauty” to sell soap and using the narrowly defined beauty image in another ad campaign to sell deodorant.

So, what does this have to do with marital sex? I think a lot. These definitions of beauty that society pushes changes our perception of ourselves and the person to whom we are married. We’ve allowed companies like Unilever to have a greater impact on how we view ourselves and our spouse than we’ve allowed our spouse or even God to make that impact.

That can’t be good…