This just in: Let's blame 10-year-olds for their skin insecurities
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On this week’s edition of ‘Reasons why I hate it here’ (here being the beauty industry I report on) is a new campaign by Dove and Ogilvy.
The brands have launched a marketing campaign called ‘10 vs 10’, which shows ten-year-olds ‘then versus now’ and asks ‘When did 10 stop looking like 10?’. Which, in its essence would be fine - we’ve all heard about the Drunk Elephant kids and are no doubt concerned about the demographic of skincare users getting younger and younger. But, coming from one of the biggest beauty brands in the world, stings my eyes with hypocrisy.
Sure, Dove is one of the better beauty giants, they produce body-positive campaigns and have been shifting their language over the years (anti-ageing is now pro-ageing’). That being said, they still sell products marketed at women to make us smoother, firmer and more Dolphin-like. They are not just part of the problem, they also help to create the problem; simply in a less evil way than many of their counterparts.
And so, on seeing this ad campaign, I got Very Angry, Actually. Putting my finger on exactly why I settled on the framing and copy as the biggest problem. It is not gesturing to society or themselves but to the girls. The blame is not explicit, and maybe not even intended, but in the lack of clarity, that’s what has happened.
This is all too common. During the ‘Drunk Elephant kids’ discourse, I found myself constantly shaking my head at how people tweeted and commented that ‘I never looked like that in my day’ and ‘SAD, girls should be outside playing not putting on retinol’. Society’s instinct is to blame the literal children for their internalisation of beauty standards rather than the beauty standards themselves. We need to shift our lens, and that lens shift will not come from a corporate giant whose main driver will always be profit.
Fundamentally, Dove and Ogilvy’s incentives cannot be taken as pure: because they rely on self-esteem issues for their business to exist. Ultimately, no beauty company can have clean hands. Especially when your parent company (Unilever) owns Glow & Lovely (previously Fair & Lovely), a skin-whitening product that is now thinly veiled as a brightening cream. Critiquing beauty standards whilst making billions off them is hollow at best, and at worst…it’s taking us for fools.