Video: Women aren't "celebrating" their "many shapes and sizes" with Dove's new ad

We’ve probably spent enough time (for now, anyway) poking fun at or despairing over the airline industry, so let’s turn our attention to a different sector of the market. Dove is a well known brand which produces a range of bath and beauty products with marketing campaigns generally designed to cater to the fairer sex. They’ve actually been largely successful in this, encouraging women to love their own bodies and not feel restricted to some impossible standard set by swimsuit models. But their most recent effort seems to have fallen flat, if you’ll pardon the phrasing. The Washington Post covers the rather unenthusiastic reception Dove received when they decided to put out a limited time series of body wash bottles in a variety of suggestive shapes representing the “many shapes” of women.

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After years of encouraging women to love their bodies, Dove set out to give its plastic bottles a makeover. The idea: “Just like women, we wanted to show that our iconic bottle can come in all shapes and sizes, too,” the company said on its website.

After just hours of its new advertising campaign, it seems indignation comes in all shapes and sizes, too.

The six shapely bottles — which include curvy, slender and pear-shaped varieties — have attracted ridicule.

“Dove ruined its body image,” the Atlantic declared.” “Dove is running out of ideas,”added the women’s site Jezebel.

Here’s the video, which spends most of its time inside of a manufacturing facility showing huge machines grinding out products like some sort of wartime Germany propaganda film. When it gets to the end they reveal the various bottles. How they are supposed to be representative of women’s figures is… not explained.

The social media feedback was fairly brutal. One woman told them that they didn’t need to be reminded that she was “pear shaped.” I did a quick check on Twitter to see how well some of the ladies were receiving the idea and the news wasn’t much better.

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I wonder what comes next? Perhaps packages of hot dogs with a huge bulge in the middle? Go back to the drawing board, Dove. You missed the mark on this one by a wide margin.

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