The “real beauty” evangelists at Dove are at it again, this time with a campaign that features women aged 50+ wearing nothing but…nothing.

The copy reads: “Too old to be in an anti-aging ad,” and it promotes Dove’s new line of Pro-Age products, which are aimed at the pictured demographic. I think the photos are beautiful, and the campaign has the potential to be nothing short of revolutionary. That is…if anyone actually sees it. It turns out that the TV commercial portion of the ad blitz was banned in America by the FCC for showing, get this, too much skin. (It is being shown in Canada, however.) Dove has gone ahead and posted the commercial on their site anyway, so do give it a look.

This whole debacle is fascinating to me on two fronts. 1) How can it be that Ms. Spears is allowed to gyrate in a bikini top on MTV with a snake whilst singing “I’m a slave for you” to 12 year olds, but 50-something women are not allowed to be shown sans clothes in what I would argue is a completely tasteful, if not downright elegant manner? And 2) why is said “debacle” not more of a…well…debacle? The only mainstream coverage I was able to find on this was here, and that’s on a Canadian news site.

Women, beauty, body, aging, and the media representation thereof are elements that are intrinsically braided together, especially here in the states. If the commercial itself can’t be a conversation starter in this country, hopefully its censorship will be.

More to come on this, I’m sure.

Tags: advertising

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This entry was posted on Thursday, March 1st, 2007 at 12:29 am and is filed under Creative. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.