Screenshots of Dove’s 2016 advertisement

This paper is about racial stereotypes being thrown into soap/body wash advertisements and how those stereotypes stem all the way from the 19th century. The advertisement I chose to analyze for this topic was Dove’s 2016 Facebook ad.

Since the original post on Dove’s Facebook page was taken down, I had to find a Youtube video from Business Insider that showed their whole post: https://youtu.be/zkIrbVycAeM?feature=shared 

Observations:

If you look at the whole post, it shows a 3-second video loop of an African-American woman wearing a brown shirt and then takes it off, revealing a white woman in a white shirt. The white woman then takes off her shirt to reveal another woman of color. All three women are standing in front of a white-tiled shower wall background with a bottle of Dove body wash next to them. The post also has a caption: “Ready for a Dove shower? Sulfate Free with 100% gentle cleansers, our body wash gets top marks from dermatologists.” (Business Insider, Youtube).

Deconstructing the Advertisement:

I’ll be using Roland Barthes, Ferdinand de Saussure, and Stuart Hall’s theories of semiotics to try and break down the signs in this advertisement. First we have the ad’s caption, this is the ad’s linguistic message, which according to Barthes’ theory, is defined as the verbal text that’s paired with an image (Barthes, Roland). Roland Barthes was a French literary theorist and a semiotician, the study of signs and symbols and their interpretation. What Dove was intentionally trying to express through its linguistic message, was that their body wash is gentle on skin and prevents dryness, hence why it gets top-marks from dermatologists, doctors who specialize in skin conditions.

Ferdinand de Saussure was a linguist and a semiotician too. His theory defines that a sign, anything that creates meaning, contains two parts: a signifier and a signified. Saussure’s definition of a signifier was a word, image, sound, anything we see, speak, or hear to refer to a sign (Saussure, Ferdinand, D.). In Dove’s case, their signifiers in this advertisement would be the smile on each woman’s face and the tiled background. Sassure’s definition of a signified is the concept our minds create in relation to a sign. For Dove, their signified signs would be that a smile equals happiness. All three women in the ad are showing bright smiles, so we immediately assume that they’re happy. If we tie that to Dove’s body wash product, we can tell that all three women are happy from the product due to their facial expressions. As for the tiled background, we can tell that the ad’s setting takes place in a bathtub or shower, so our minds associate the white-tiled background with a shower, making it signified.

Stuart Hall was a famous sociologist that created the “Cultural Studies” field, which prioritized the importance of representation. His theory basically explains how representation of a culture can be altered when it’s shown through media, which can lead to misinformation, biases, and stereotypes (Hall, Stuart). In Dove’s case, the stereotype of “black skin is dirty” and “white skin is better/prettier” has led the audience to think this is what Dove was going for, when in reality it wasn’t.

Denotative & Connotative Signs:

Since Dove was trying to express that their body wash is gentle on skin and prevents dryness, they used the three different women in the ad to showcase their clean and shining skin. This was Dove’s denotative, literal, message. But the way it was executed visually led to lots of backlash towards Dove on social media. This was due to their ad showing a black woman turning into a white woman through the shirt transition. Because of this misinterpretation, people online started to accuse Dove of being “racially insensitive”. The audience was getting the interpretation that Dove was basically trying to say, “lighter skin is cleaner and more beautiful than brown skin” or something along the lines of that.

Eventually this led to Dove taking down the post and apologizing by saying: “An image we recently posted on Facebook missed the mark in representing women of color thoughtfully. We deeply regret the offense it caused.” (Business Insider, Youtube).The racial insensitivity was Dove’s unintentional message, despite the linguistic message in their caption. The audience’s response turned into a connotative sign, its coded message.

Examples from the Past:

This wasn’t Dove’s first controversial ad either. Back in 2011, Dove made an ad showcasing the “before” and “after” of dry skin after using Dove’s body wash:

Dove’s 2011 Advertisement

Here we see the same misinterpretation of “lighter skin is more beautiful” due to the placement of the women in the advertisement. It led to the audience thinking that Dove body wash gives you more “beautiful” skin; lighter skin, despite Dove’s PR firm responding with: “All three women are intended to demonstrate the ‘after’ product benefit.” And again led to lots of backlash from the audience.

The whole stereotype of “lighter skin is more beautiful” or “darker skin is dirty” in soap advertisements stems all the way from the 19th’s century. For example, James Pyle’s Pearline soap advertisements showcased many images of African Americans using their soap to “wash off” their dark skin:

African American mother and child Pyle’s Pearline soap

Pyle’s Pearline soap ads were just one of many examples of advertisers using stereotypes of Black people to sell their products. These stereotypes have followed us through modern times, although less obvious, but still present if you look through the different signs.

How today’s audience would respond:

If today’s audience were to look at Dove’s 2016 ad, we might actually get the reaction that Dove was trying to get in the first place. When I was scrolling through the comments of Dove’s 2016 ad, most of the comments were confused on how the ad could be racist and saw the ad’s real message. That this is a body wash product for women and the use of women of different skin shades means that this product works for women of all shades. It’s just the execution that led to its controversy. But we also might get a few reactions that can see the advertisement as racist as well, so it could honestly go either way. Different perspectives can lead us to seeing different messages and signs, just like these Dove ads did (Hall, Stuart).

Conclusion:

In conclusion, stereotypes that stem all the way from the past can still be present in modern day advertisements. The representation of a specific group of people, African-Americans in this case, can lead to stereotypes being “normalized” and showcased in all kinds of media without really seeing its other hidden messages.

Bibliography/Works Cited:

  1. Astor, Maggie. “Dove Drops an Ad Accused of Racism.” New York Times, October 8th, 2017. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/08/business/dove-ad-racist.html 
  1. Barthes, Roland. “Rhetoric of the Image.” Image/Music/Text. New York: Hill and Wang (1977): 33-37. https://openlab.citytech.cuny.edu/spevackcomd3504fa24/files/2022/11/Barthes_PanzaniUpdatedImage.pdf 
  1. “People are accusing this Dove ad of being racist.” Youtube, uploaded by Business Insider, October 9th, 2017. https://youtu.be/zkIrbVycAeM?feature=shared 
  2. “Dove says they ‘deeply regret’ ad following widespread backlash.” Youtube, uploaded by Good Morning America, October 9th, 2017. https://youtu.be/vL4b-Il3EnE?feature=shared 
  1. Hall, Stuart. The Work of Representation. Representation, Sage Publications & Open University, 1997. https://openlab.citytech.cuny.edu/spevackcomd3504fa24/files/2024/02/Exceprt_1.1_The-work-of-representation-Stuart-Hall.pdf 
  1. Liz, Conor. “Dove: real beauty and the racist history.” La Trobe University, 2017. https://www.latrobe.edu.au/news/articles/2017/opinion/dove-real-beauty-and-the-racist-history 
  1. McCandless, Peter. “Soap, Imperialism, and Racism.” History and Other Stuff, 2019. https://mycandles.blogspot.com/2019/02/soap-and-white-mans-burden.html 
  1. Saussure, Ferdinand D. “Course in General Linguistics.” Translated from French by Wade Baskin, New York, Philosophical Library (1959): 65-70. https://openlab.citytech.cuny.edu/spevackcomd3504fa24/files/2024/02/Saussure_CourseGenLing_Exc.pdf 
  1. Shirbon, Estelle. “Dove faces PR disaster over ad that showed black woman turning white.” Reuters, October 9th, 2017. https://www.reuters.com/article/business/dove-faces-pr-disaster-over-ad-that-showed-black-woman-turning-white-idUSKBN1CE16X/#:~:text=In%20the%20full%20clip%2C%20the,Dove%20said%20in%20a%20statement
  1. Slawson, Nicola. “Dove apologizes for ad showing black woman turning into white one.” The Guardian, October 8th, 2017. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/08/dove-apologises-for-ad-showing-black-woman-turning-into-white-one 
  1. Smithsonian NMAH Archives, Warshaw Collection of Business Americana. “African American Mother and child Pyle’s Pearline soap.” Race & Ethnicity in Advertisement. America in the 20th Century. https://raceandethnicity.org/items/show/1234 
  2. TODAY Style. “Dove body wash ad stirs controversy.Today News, May 26th, 2011. https://www.today.com/style/dove-body-wash-ad-stirs-controversy-flna1c8368826

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