Dove Men + Care: Anatomy of a Contradiction

In my recent Super Bowl manvertising recap, I put the Dove Men + Care commercial into a group called “The Return of Resentment” alongside the Dodge Charger ad. I stand by what I said then: “the message in it is moving toward hostility and ‘taking back’ masculinity.”

Yet, the campaign as a whole perplexes me more than almost any other product launch aimed at men in the history of this blog.

First, though, here’s the commercial again:

The campaign perplexes me because it is full of contradictions, at times gesturing toward remarkably progressive politics and awareness, and at other times the same old song and dance, a narrative of male anxiety about emasculation alleviated through the use of a genderless product crafted by marketeers into a gendered “solution.” Briefly, Dove Men + Care is a new line of men’s grooming products designed to compete in a growing market. If you don’t believe me, pay a visit to your local superstore: the grooming aisle has turned into a adults’ version of the toy section. All pink on one side, blue on the other.

As I am a film studies student by day, let’s make the rest of this post an homage to The Man with No Name (who, as we will see, plays a role in this story). Cue the Morricone music.

The Good

It is difficult to describe the shock I experienced when I learned that Michael Kaufman had been hired by Dove to act as a “gender expert” for the product launch. For those unfamiliar, Kaufman is one of the highest-profile public intellectuals in the field of gender studies and men’s issues, and edited an anthology called “Beyond Patriarchy” that is almost without peer in the subject area. Here’s just a brief excerpt from Kaufman’s introduction to the book:

“The problem for men is not merely the fear of an uncertain future in a nonsexist, nonpatriarchal world — after all, one of the traits we value so highly is courage. The problem is that our current world of certainties reaffirms our self-definition of what it means to be a man. What makes feminism a threat for so many men, or at least a source of confusion and struggle, is not only that we have privileges to lose, but that it appears — or at least feels — as if our very manhood is at stake.”

To put it as plain as possible, Kaufman’s participation in this product launch made me almost fall out my chair. Why would this deeply respected, very thoughtful, extremely prolific analyst of contemporary gender issues possibly get involved with such a high-profile bit of manvertising?

Here’s Kaufman’s own words from the launch: “In spite of decades of progress, we still live in a world where men have more power. But the individual experience of men doesn’t reflect that at all.” He went on with a very familiar litany to those who keep up on what sociologists have been saying for decades: men feel increasingly anxious about the images presented to them on television, in movies, and in commercials. They want to be better fathers and partners. They don’t want to define themselves through work, they want to make a difference in their personal lives away from their jobs. They feel anxious being bombarded by Clint Eastwood-like depictions of masculinity that they can’t live up to. (See, I told you the Eastwood reference would play a role.)

Dove, apparently, wants to help with all that. With soap.

More specifically, they think they can tap into those feelings by creating a brand identity around their soap, which they are selling with a message of “feeling comfortable in your own skin.” According to one report, Dove conducted surveys last year in seven countries to get feedback about contemporary advertising and learned that more than seven in ten men found it difficult to relate to the masculinity they see in commercials.

This sounds a lot like the rhetoric of ad agency Sullivan Higdon & Sink, who are mentioned in much of the discourse around the Dove campaign (but are not the agency who designed the Dove ads; Ogilvy put them together). SH&S conducted similar surveys, with similar results. The men in that survey even expressed interest in being equal partners in both domestic responsibilities and child-rearing — two things that manvertising simply refuses to address in a serious fashion.

SH&S even advertise particular skill in marketing to men, and have a whitepaper on their website about the “misandry of stereotypes” in contemporary marketing that actually advocates stereotype-free marketing to men.

Dove clearly buys into what SH&S are selling, even if they aren’t using them just yet. Of course, as scholars have been pointing out for years (in fact, several do so in Kaufman’s anthology), this type of male reaction isn’t new. The anxiety about what it “means to be a man” is always rooted in the problem of representation; masculinity is socially constructed, and as such can never be authentically represented. It doesn’t exist as anything but vapor. Here’s an important point for anyone interested in masculinity: the results of these surveys will always be the same unless fundamental changes are made to the way culture understands gender.

And that’s why Kaufman’s presence on this campaign is so exciting. As an expert, he really does bring credibility to the public statements about Dove’s interest in how men feel. I certainly place more stock in his words than I do in those of some brand manager for Dove. I’ll address some of my cynicism below, but here, in the section for The Good, I want to point out how exciting it is that the Dove people sought out Kaufman, listened to his opinion, and wanted it to be attached to their product.

To summarize, Dove actually wants someone who says, to anyone who will listen, that masculinity is a social construction attached to their product. This is groundbreaking.

Yet there’s more positivity here than just Kaufman.

As images from the “Wake Up” commercial illustrate (apologies for the captions not working on those two pictures), Dove is taking the practically unprecedented step of representing relatively young men with their children. I recall Michael Kimmel’s urgent suggestion that, for culture’s image of masculinity to change, one crucial step would be to start showing men in roles that have typically emasculated them — one of which is as fathers experiencing tender moments with their children. Dove, to my incredible surprise, is doing just that.

There’s also the issue of the tagline: “Be Comfortable in your own skin.” This is also an extremely positive message, one that isn’t selling anxiety, competition, or fear. It’s actually suggesting that men simply accept who they are, rather than worry incessantly about the need to be something else, or a failure to live up to some impossible standard of masculinity. The Super Bowl ad even addresses many of these anxieties, suggesting how ridiculous they are for men to endure as they mature. But that leads us to…

The Bad

I can’t shake the feeling, watching the Super Bowl ad numerous times, that Dove couldn’t help fall into some manvertising traps. Yes, it’s true (as I point out above), that the ad speaks to the anxieties men feel about living up to masculinity (be good at sports, be strong, etc.), but the ad does little to really interrogate them. A few moments really stand out:

1. Notice how, at the beginning, when the hero of this ad is born, his father falls over in the delivery room? Then, later, when he attends the birth of his own children, he also falls over (the image above). No doubt this tired, old stereotype is funny, but it also points to Dove’s failure to criticize those tropes. Men, the ad seems to suggest, aren’t (or can’t) really change — they can only “feel comfortable” about it. This message, when seen this way, is not really progressive at all.

2. As I pointed out in my original Super Bowl recap post, the ad also uses the now-traditional exaggerated humor in the voice-over and singing style. Humor, then, is still the primary narrative tool. Paul Connell, brand manager for Dove, acknowledges as much when he calls the campaign “light-hearted.” Why is there a need for the campaign to be funny? It might be argued that manvertising can’t change overnight; then again, why not? Is it really still necessary to claim, in boisterous, exaggerated tones, “Because you’re a MAN!” at the end? To me, the exaggeration and “light-heartedness” diminish the serious message here. It’s not that I’m against humor, just that I think there’s no reason for this particular style in this campaign. Surely there are other ways to put a little humor into men’s grooming habits and products than by using the stock exaggerations? To see how this exaggeration is a deliberate part of the campaign, just watch (and listen to) the British version of the ad.

3. Why does the man in this ad have to end up alone at the end? Given that other images in this campaign show men with children and with adult female partners (sadly, no same-sex partners just yet; that, apparently, is still somewhere in the future), why does it end with him all by himself? Notice what he’s next to: the backyard grill.

Even with all the progressive imagery and narrative in this campaign, this ad still ends with the most stereotypical of images: a man, by himself, with his grill. It’s almost as if Dove had to include a few little reminders to soothe the anxieties of the audience, to remind them that “fighting dry skin” can still involve all the sacred totems of conventional masculinity.

And that takes us to…

The Ugly

A reminder of corporate connections: Dove is owned by Unilever, which also owns one of the all-time, hall of fame manvertisers: Axe. Here’s just one recent example of their prototypical manvertising:

I’ve written about Unilever’s ownership of the Axe brand before, but in a much different context. I was focused then on how the same company could own Axe, which incessantly pumps out sexist, misogynistic imagery and narratives, and Dove, which has for some time emphasized the “Real Beauty” campaign for women. Here’s one example:

I asked then how the same company could promote both messages, and ultimately suggested that Unilever had created the perfect capitalism machine, able to replicate the necessary imagery and narratives for BOTH campaigns.

I was wrong.

This new Dove Men + Care campaign ads an entirely new, entirely necessary cog to that machine, a cog based around an awareness of their market. I would suggest that they have realized that men after a certain age no longer respond to the images and fantasies of the Axe brand identity, and have thus constructed this new one to fill that gap. If men, after a certain point in their lives, feel an urge to “grow up,” what better way to sell to them than by literally saying, “Now that you’ve grown up…” Those words come at the end of the Super Bowl ad, and speak directly to the new element in their machine.

How does Kaufman feel about the connection between Dove and Axe? One reporter asked the question, to which Kaufman responded, “It’s certainly something I raised. I hope they will change.”

I do, too, but I’m not hopeful. After all, this is the same company that has now been exposed as having extensively airbrushed the women of the “Real Beauty” campaign, in order to “keep everyone’s skin and faces showing the mileage but not looking unattractive.” It’s the same company that continues to tap into (if not help create) the anxieties of young men in the Axe campaigns, but then turns those messages around on them when they turn 30 in the Men + Care campaign.

As I said in my earlier post on Unilever: one hand washing the other, replicating the imagery necessary to create the anxieties to sell the products, rinse, repeat. The real shame is that they’ve somehow convinced Michael Kaufman to take part in this under the guise that they care about change. To quote once more from his introduction to his anthology:

“Each of us is part of the world we are seeking to comprehend; our understanding is not detached and neutral. To put it simply, we all have something to gain or lose by the conclusions we reach and the actions that follow.”

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