Help me find an advertisement Nevermind, Help me ANALYZE an advertisement

I was reading a People magazine yesterday (Hey, I was at the dentist. It was all they had) and I came across an ad that bothered me and I wanted to see if I could find it online. It’s for some sort of body wash, possibly by Dove but possibly not. The ad is a picture of two large prints hanging on a wall. One shows dry skin, the other clear skin, and they are labeled “Before” and “After”. In front of the two prints on the wall are three women dressed in nothing but white bath towels.

My problem with the ad is that the three women are arranged side by side in a way that also suggests a before/after relationship, and they go from a heavier set, darker skinned woman on the left to a lighter skinned, thinner woman on the right. I think it’s intentional to prey on people’s deep inner thinking that darker skin=bad and heavier=bad and white and thin=good. I could be overthinking this but I’d like to have some other people look at it and get their opinion.

Oh hey, I just googled it to see if I could find it on my own and lookie what I found:

So I’m not alone!

I t never would have occurred to me to think “racism” in that ad. Maybe it’s just me.

Yes, it’s either stupid or racist. (And I’m using the inclusive “or” there – it’s probably both.) For a “before and after” ad, don’t you need the same person before and after whatever treatment they are recommending?

Well, just try to imagine the ad with the three women in the reverse order.

Racist, but if I’d run across the ad randomly, I’d just think to myself, “What is wrong with this?”
Also sizeist, as the woman on the right is thinnest.

I agree, which I mentioned in my OP. I think they’re going for “least desirable on the left, most desirable on the right”

I think they were trying to say the product is good for women of any skin color. There’s not an explicit statement that the women are before and after shots, in fact, all the women have pretty good skin and to my mind are satisfied users of the product.

Of course, the product will be purchased by many women who will use it briefly, then leave the partially empty bottle in the bathroom because it will fail in its implicit promise which is to make the woman feel better about herself.

I guess the ad is poorly constructed in a semiotic sense in that it fails to visually separate the product informational shorthand in the background (before/after skin closeups) from the emotional appeal embodied in the foreground grouping of pretty smiling women. Had they arranged the group in exactly the same way, but shot them so that the background text was partially obscured but readable, it would’ve helped split those features into separate messages.

Having said that, I think any assumptions that Dove is trying to show a progression from dark >>> light or from full figured >>> slim are ridiculous exercises in recreational outrage.

Before and after apply to the large photographs of the skin. It does not apply to the three women in towels.

Dove has been on a ‘real beauty’ kick for quite some time now using plus sized models and models of various colors.

Have you never seen this video?
Perhaps you should check out the Dove Self-Esteem Fund.

Almost certainly not intentional, since all three models are smiling. One of the oldest tricks in the book for before and after pictures is to have the before picture frowning, and the after picture smiling (in fact, sometimes that’s the only difference).

That said, someone should probably have noticed the potential for misinterpretation, and fixed it before it ran.

No, it’s you and anyone else who understands that “before” and “after” clearly applies to the skin in the enormous photographs, and isn’t meant to imply that the use of this remarkable product can turn you from a curly-haired zaftig black woman into a thin straight-haired blonde(well, ish) white woman.

This is how I see it, too. The women are not the before and after comparison. The close-up pictures of skin are.

I know that’s how it is supposed to read, but I think the subliminal message is there that darker skin and heavier people are less desireable, whether they intended it or not.

ETA: in other words, it’s a poorly designed ad and someone should have caught it before it ran.

You know, I looked at the ad many times, and did not realise the “before” and “after” referred to pictures of skin. So there is a sort of defense for it, but why do the three models cover parts of those pictures of skin, in such a way that the darkest one seems part of the “before” and the lightest one is part of the “after”? I find it hard to believe this is random choice: there’s a deliberate association of lighter skin with cleaner skin here.

I disagree. A left-to-right progression doesn’t necessarily indicate an improvement.

I’m not seeing racism. The before and after refers to the two pictures of skin. And the three women are supposed to show Dove is a good product for all women.

It’s ironic that Dove’s attempt to include women of different colors has led it to be accused of racism.

It would have worked better if the skin examples had been arranged top-to-bottom rather than left-to-right, such that the eye would have been drawn down the page: “Before (bad skin swatch)” “After (soft skin swatch)” “group shot of three ‘real women’.”

Except that the word ‘before’ is on the left and ‘after’ is on the right.

I’m perfectly convinced that the association was unintentional, but the placement of the elements in the ad lend themselves to a ‘wait, what?’ reaction.

Another vote for probably-not-intentionally-racist-but-easily-misperceived-as-such here.

Face it, the black woman is standing almost directly under the “before” label and the white woman almost directly under the “after” label. It is very easy to misread that layout as implying that the product changes skin tone rather than skin texture.

If there was anything intentional about the clumsy design of the ad, it was probably just meant to generate argumentation and media buzz (e.g., this thread) to provide free viral advertising for Dove.

Superimposed directly on top of enormous photographs of dry skin and moisturized skin, which happen to be the exact same color.