Dove wants your money and will tell you what you want to hear

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You’ve probably seen the latest Dove viral ad campaign. It’s a video available on you tube about how totally awesome Dove is because of their decade long “Real Beauty” campaign and how now they’re going after the people who are REALLY evil: “art directors, graphic designers, and photo retouchers.” Not ad executives and companies, no. Just those evil artists who for reasons TOTALLY UNKNOWN make women feel bad ON PURPOSE about their bodies. But how to “catch them in the act!!!” and “make them reconsider”? They needed a plan! So they created a Photoshop Action and released it into the wild, where it will be used by amateurs who want to make wedding and baby photographs look better. Billed as a “skin glow effect” they posted it on reddit and other places where art directors, graphic designers, and professional photo retouchers TOTALLY hang out and get their totally professional Photoshop Actions, Brushes, etc from.

In reality, all the Action does is revert all changes made to the original image and pop up a scolding message.

Don’t manipulate our perceptions of real beauty.

Of course, to undo that reversion, all one has to do is hit… well… undo.

BAM! A totally effective message that will OBVIOUSLY CHANGE THE WORLD FOREVER!

Or, more likely, go viral and make Dove look totally awesome and progressive because they just love women so much and are so willing to take on those horrible evil photo retouchers who are just the WORST, right?

Dove, remember, is owned by Unilver which has those atrocious Axe commercials (women! they are fuck beasts for fucking!) and SlimFast (women: you are fat cows, stop eating!). If they really wanted to push for long acting real social change, they could apply pressure to Unilver to at the very least stop marketing Axe the way it’s marketed.

Of course, they could also change their own advertising as well.

I mean, if Dove really thinks womens’ bodies are beautiful and we should all stop altering our perceptions of real beauty, maybe they shouldn’t find new body parts for women to be ashamed of? I, for one, never knew my armpits were ugly until Dove told me so.

If Dove really thinks womens’ bodies are beautiful and we should all stop altering our perceptions of real beauty, they wouldn’t market Firming Creams, and their criteria for casting calls wouldn’t be quite as shameful (beautiful skin and hair only! No zits or scars, those are GROSSSSSSSS).

If Dove (and Unilever) really thinks womens’ bodies are beautiful and we should all stop altering our perceptions of real beauty, they wouldn’t market skin-lightening creams (which are physically as well as emotionally harmful) around the world.

Like diet companies who co-opt HAES and Size Acceptance verbage, and companies who practice Greenwashing, Dove is taking Body Acceptance language and using it to sell product. They are telling women what they think women want to hear for the sole reason that they want to sell products to those women. There’s nothing inherently wrong with companies advertising their wares. What’s wrong is the incredibly hypocritical advertising Dove uses. They aren’t trying to change the world, but they very willing to use social justice and activism language to sell their products and their subtle form of body hate. Dove doesn’t give a shit about your body or how beautiful you feel, they just want your money.

One of the worst things is that Dove is actually in a position to make actual changes in the industry. Instead of telling everyone that we should pat them on the back for promoting size acceptance and bodily diversity (while actually showing a pretty narrow range of sizes and skin colors), they could just use a wide variety of women of different body types and ethnicities. They could show instead of telling. They could push for Unilever to do the same with other ad campaigns as well. And they could pressure Unilever to drop the body shaming, sexist, manipulative language and images that other Unilever products use. But Dove isn’t doing that. Instead, they’re creating viral videos that do the bulk of advertising for them (saving them money) and creating good will among their users. It’s an effective ad campaign, but it’s also an insulting one.

Dove claims that they’re against distorting perceptions of beauty, which is harmful to women, while telling women that their armpits are ugly and their skin is saggy and their scars are gross and their frizzy hair is uggsville and their dark/uneven skin is THE WORST, but hey it’s ok because they can spend money on products to make them prettier YAY GIRL POWER WOOOOO now how about a nice round of SlimFast for all? The hypocrisy is thick on the ground.

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Dough

There are two type of people in the world, people who don’t eat raw dough and gross assholes people who do. Niko, somehow, has become one of those people who eats and enjoys raw dough so whenever I make bread or something that doesn’t have eggs in it (BECAUSE I AM INCREDIBLY PARANOID ABOUT SALMONELLA FROM EGGS EVEN THOUGH I KNOW RATIONALLY THAT A PINCH OF DOUGH WON’T KILL ANYONE AND ALSO THAT ONE IS MORE LIKELY TO GET SALMONELLA FROM FRUITS OR VEGETABLES) I have to pinch off a wad of dough and give it to him to eat.

I have a mostly devoured loaf of bread on the counter, cut side down, and two loaves shaped and going through their second rise on the stove top. The loaf on the counter is full of holes because Niko keeps sneaking into the kitchen and stabbing it.

I just need to kill this loaf of bread, mama, so I can eat it. I’m a bread hunter.

OH WELL DUH OF COURSE.

If you’re interested in making your own bread, you should try it. You have to plan ahead (from start to finish, making bread can literally take hours if not days, if you’re doing a sourdough), and remember that fresh bread will only keep a few days before getting rock hard. But all you need is flour (preferably bread flour), water, yeast, and a bit of salt.

WHAT I DO IS THIS: I put 1 tbl each yeast¹ and white sugar in a liquid cup-size measuring cup and add 1/2 c hot water (hot from the tap, not heated up). I let it proof until the yeast foam reaches the 1c line on the cup. Then I take the stainless steel mixing bowl of my super powerful and awesome stand mixer and rinse it with hot water until it’s warm. Then I dump the yeast water in, and fill the 1c measure to the 1c line with more hot water and put that in, too. I add 2c of bread flour and sprinkle 1/2-1 tbl salt on top of that and put the bowl in the stand mixer and add the bread hook. Once it’s mixed together I add UP TO 3 additional cups of flour (often closer to only 1 cup, though. I add 1/3c at a time) and let the mixer knead away for about five minutes.

Bread dough is ready when it feels like a baby’s butt. It should be soft but spring back when you touch it. It shouldn’t be sticky, but it shouldn’t be dry either. I recommend erring on the side of too-wet. It’s easier to incorporate more flour than more water.

When your dough is ready, slap it into a bowl that’s been well oiled. Cover it with plastic wrap and then a towel and stick it in a warm, draft-free place. I put it on top of my oven and turn the oven to “warm.” If I don’t use plastic wrap the dough dries out. Let it rise until doubled, which can take 30-90 minutes, then gently deflate it, knead it a few times, and either shape it into one large or two small loaves, depending on your pans. Oil your pans up, drop your loaves into the pans, and cover them the same way you covered the bowls. Let them rise for about half an hour, then turn on the oven to 400*F. Once it’s heated up, slash the tops of your loaves and slap them in the oven for 15-30 minutes depending on the size of the pans. You’ll know your bread is done when it’s browned on top and sounds hollow when you slip it out of the pan and tap on the bottom. If the bottom and sides of your loaf are too pale, set the naked loaf directly on the oven rack for 5-10 minutes until it’s toasted up a bit. When you pull the bread out, you can brush the top with melted butter for looks and taste. I usually skip this step because I have friends & family who are vegan, so if I’m making an un-enriched (IE, not made with eggs/milk/butter) loaf, I keep it “clean” just in case they stop by.

If you want to make pizza dough, add 3tbl oil (I use olive oil) to the water in the bowl, continue as directed. Instead of dividing into 2 loaves, though, split it into 2-4 balls (depending on how thin you like your crust) before the second rise. Back at 400*F on a pan for 10-15 minutes (keep an eye on it) being careful not to over-top the pizza because it’ll be soggy.

If you buy a loaf of bread from the store it can cost US$2-5.00. A 5lb sack of bread flour costs less than $5.00 and I buy yeast cheaply in bulk and pretty much always have water, salt, and olive oil on hand. It’s pretty economical to make your own bread once you’ve practiced a bit, and it makes the house smell AMAZING. AH-MAZE-ING. I’m super glad I have my stand mixer, though, because I have carpal tunnel and arthritis and when I have to knead dough by hand I hurt for a long time afterward.

1. if you buy yeast from a packet, it’s got 2 1/4 tsp in it. I round up to 1 tbl which is the same as 3 tsp. The extra yeast doesn’t hurt anything. ↩

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