Dove Soap Is A Sponsor Of 'Body Positivity.' It's Also A Food Company

Body positivity is corporate America's next big venture.

Corporate America loves body positivity. The company behind Dove soap shows us why.

Last spring, the soap brand launched a self-esteem campaign to promote the latest cultural trend normalizing obesity. The “Campaign for Size Freedom” is billed as a “movement to end body discrimination.” For Dove, the profits from a little bit of extra skincare might be marginal. For the bar soap’s parent company, Unilever, the profits are exponential.

Unilever is a U.K.-based company that was among top 40 processors of packaged foods in United States last year. Popular brands include Ben & Jerry’s ice cream and Hellmann’s Mayonnaise. In 2022, the company made more than $63 billion in gross annual profits representing a more than 2 percent increase from 2021. In other words, Unilever is one of the largest food corporations in America selling addictive products to an already overweight nation that’s dangerously addicted. It makes sense, then, that Unilever’s subsidiaries would want to capitalize on a movement to make Americans increasingly eager to buy snacks and ice cream in the name of “Size Freedom.” But how “free,” exactly, are people who’ve had too many pints of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream? Try running with a 100-pound vest.

Corporate partnerships in Dove’s campaign include the familiar faces of the body positivity movement’s contemporary mascots. The campaign is sponsored by Lizzo, the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance (NAAFA), and Megan Crabbe, who published a book in 2018 as a sort of manifesto for body positivity.

“We have to remember that body positivity was born out of radical fat acceptance,” Crabbe wrote.

Only then can we work together to dismantle the roots of our collective body image issues. Acknowledging the lived experience of fat people in the world shows us one thing loud and clear: this is not about health. When people verbally attack fat bodies out of ‘concern’ for that person’s health, they don’t care about health at all. They’re just using health as a socially condoned veil for their prejudice. If they really did care they might consider the impact that their hate has on fat people’s mental health.

I would write that another way:

Acknowledging the severe consequences of obesity would show us how eager corporate America is to capitalize on the crisis, from big pharma to big food: this is not about health. When Wall Street engineers addictive “foods” that are toxic just so pharmaceutical giants can sell expensive medications requiring lifelong compliance, they don’t care about health at all. They’re just using body positivity as a socially condoned veil for their promotion of gluttony that’s proven lucrative. If they really did care about health, then they might consider the impact of body positivity combined with 43 grams of sugar per pint.

Body positivity is great for Wall Street but deadly for Main Street. Obesity raises the risk of early death by 90 percent while obese individuals will pay double in health care costs over their lifetime.

The Dove campaign has also supported Virgie Tovar, another pro-fat activist who published a book on body positivity in 2018. In what she describes as her “manifesto” against “diet culture” and “fatphobia,” Tovar defines fatphobia as “a form of bigotry that positions fat people as inferior and as objects of hatred and derision.”

When promoting the book on the Ulta’s “Bueaty Of…” podcast last year, Tovar explained fat activism as “essentially kind of an intersectional politic that looks at ‘fat phobia’ and says ‘this is wrong, there’s nothing wrong with being fat, this is totally a natural part of body diversity.”

Tovar argues that people should abandon any fear of getting fat and with it, any interest in dieting for weight loss. Major ice cream producers could hardly have a better spokeswoman. Her 2018 book is literally titled, “You Have the Right to Remain Fat.”

Links:

New York Post: Ice cream and potato chips are just as addictive as cocaine or heroin: research

Washington Post: How Lunchables Ended Up On School Lunch Trays

Wall Street Journal: The Secret to Living to 100? It’s Not Good Habits

StudyFinds: Pharma Nation: Americans will spend half their lives taking prescription drugs, study predicts

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