The Verdict on the Latest Dove Beauty Video

The latest Dove beauty video has been released to YouTube and has garnered some reactions out of the usual praiseful realm. The Dove videos are all heartwarming videos about empowering women to embrace their natural beauty, but this one has crossed over into the “too cheesy” category.Screen shot 2014-04-11 at 5.13.39 PM

For those who haven’t seen it yet, you can watch the video here. The “beauty patches” are just placebos and all the women in the “trial” fall for it, realizing after two weeks of wearing a sticker on their arms that they are more beautiful than they knew.

While Dove’s message is great, at some point the genral public just isn’t buying it. Everyone was on board with the photoshop video, and the sketch artist video was super sweet. But really? Dove brought in some pretty women who didn’t think they were pretty. Pretty women put an elusive beauty patch on their arms and didn’t notice any changes. All of a sudden the women feel beautiful. Dove tells them nothing was in the patch. The women cry.

Yes, the video presents it in a sweeter way than that, but something about the video still feels off. The women are not actresses, Huffington Post verified that. Yet still this experiment doesn’t seem genuine.

Maybe it’s that the women are portrayed as guillable. Maybe it’s that it seems like Dove is being manipulative or patronizing. Maybe it’s that everyone else saw the whole placebo thing coming from a mile away. Whatever it is, let’s hope that Dove hears the criticism and does better next time. Empowering women is an awesome message, but not when it seems like you have to knock them donw or lie to them first.