Gillette Reignites a Conversation about Body Shaming

Body shaming is alive and well, as one tweet from Gillette reminds us.

On April 3, the Gillette Venus brand, which makes shaving products for women, tweeted a photo of plus-size fashion, fitness, and lifestyle blogger Anna O’Brien with the caption “Go out there and slay the day.”

The photo triggered a firestorm of controversy on Twitter, which spilled into mainstream news media ranging from Today to Advertising Age. Critics of the tweet accused Gillette of promoting obesity. Internet trolls peppered Twitter with ugly jokes making fun of O’Brien’s appearance. Gillette defenders fired back at critics for being judgmental and praised Gillette for empowering women. On April 4, Gillette Venus responded with a tweet of its own:

Venus is committed to representing beautiful women of all shapes, sizes, and skin types because ALL types of beautiful skin deserve to be shown. We love Anna because she lives out loud and loves her skin no matter how the “rules” say she should display it.

The tweet that reignited a debate about body shaming comes four months after Gillette ran a highly divisive advertisement, “We Believe,” which discussed toxic male behavior and challenged men to behave better. “We Believe” alienated some customers who perceived it as being an attack on masculinity, annoyed others for coming across as phony, and earned the admiration of a third camp for commenting on the #MeToo movement.

My take: Gillette has an opportunity to help effect change in how people perceive women in advertising, a lens for how women are perceived more broadly.

Dove Challenges How Women Are Depicted

For decades, the advertising industry has been accused of objectifying women and portraying them as thin, leggy, and shapely dolls. In 2004, Dove began to challenge how advertisers depict women. Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty featured images of everyday women with more relatable sizes and looks, including plus-sized women.

Since then, Dove has made it a practice to continue using everyday women in its ads. In 2017, Dove launched a “Real Beauty Pledge” in which Dove promised to use real women, not models, in its ads, and to portray them as they are in real life (with no digital retouching of photos).

It is unclear why it took Dove 13 years after launching the Campaign for Real Beauty to articulate the Real Beauty Pledge. But the important thing is that with its Real Beauty Pledge, Dove is holding itself accountable to empower women through its words and actions.

An Opportunity for Gillette

Gillette Venus is putting a stake in the ground, too, with its #MySkinMyWay campaign, featured on its socials, including its Twitter (“No retouching. No restrictions. No one way to have beautiful skin or to show it off. Venus stands with all women who right the rules. #MySkinMyWay.”) When Gillette Venus launched the #MySkinMyWay campaign, the company said,

Whether it’s what skin to show or what skin to hide, there are many rules both implicit and explicit placed on women’s skin today. Starting with the launch of the “My Skin, My Way” campaign, Gillette Venus will do its part to right those rules by celebrating every woman and every type of skin. The campaign is an overhaul of the brand’s marketing and is just the first step to a series of commitments and activations that will shine a light on women who write their own rules when it comes to how they live life in their own skin.

Gillette launched the campaign after a Gillette Venus poll of women in North America revealed that 87 percent of women wish they did not feel pressure to follow rules about how their skin should look. Nearly nine out of 10 women said that women have to follow more skin rules than men, and 41 percent admitted they have judged other women for skin flaws. To help change perceptions, Gillette’s #MySkinMyWay ads celebrate women with unedited imagery depicting how their skin looks.

All of these efforts are well and good so long as Gillette and other advertisers stop thinking in terms of one-off campaigns. Advertisers hate to come across as followers, but it’s OK for Gillette to follow Dove’s lead by making #MySkinMyWay a permanent practice, not just a campaign. Even so, Gillette may face some challenges that have to do with the nature of the Gillette Venus product, razors and shaving gels. My colleague Mary Sustar weighed in with an important distinction between Dove (focused on soap) and Gillette Venus (focused on shaving) as follows (via email):

I’m struck by the fundamental product difference between soap and razors. Soap is a fairly gender neutral product. Razors are intrinsically tied to hormones. Their very existence is (mostly) about changing the appearance of one’s skin after hormones kick in (male or female).

This difference makes me feel that the Gillette #MySkinMyWay has a steeper credibility mountain to climb. Would their advertising need to include bearded men and hairy female armpits for me to believe #MySkinMyWay? For me, it might.

That said, when bellwether businesses such as Gillette depict people more naturally and realistically, the message will be sent: get over yourselves, folks, and, as Janice Deal notes, if you’re really concerned about obesity, fight the proliferation and promotion of unhealthy food.

Meanwhile, the reactions to the Gillette ad shows how much work advertisers still need to do.

I’m on Twitter at @davidjdeal

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