Dove's campaign: Beauty or Business?

With great hype and endless billboards, Dove has mounted a "Campaign for Beauty" to announce the release of its new "firming" cream. The ads feature underwear clad models with bodies that don't fit the current stick-thin supermodel style. While all of the women have conventionally attractive faces, there is more dermatology on display than air-brushing fashion photogs usually allow. The fetching femmes feature enough wrinkles, sun spots, facial bumps, tattoos, and moley moles to keep a skin clinic busy for at least half an afternoon.

Notably, a dark vertical line creases one model's abdomen. Known medically as linea nigra, it is traditionally seen after pregnancy, due to melanin pigment stimulated by high levels of estrogen hormone. While I doubt that Dove's "firming" cream will fade this discoloration, time and sun protection should restore the normal tone.

Though the campaign purports an admirable goal, addressing the pressures on women to conform to idealized standards, it seems the true "campaign" is to market a product. What is "firm" skin? If this salve is supposed to correct the terrors of cellulite, wouldn't they just say that and accept a write-in vote for the Nobel prize? And if women can be happy as is, why do they need to be "firmed?"

Care to comment?