For whatever reason, I decided to give this Dove commercial a watch.

It’s probably because I’ve written about their feel good “beauty” campaigns before. And though I can’t seem to locate any of those past articles on their other commercials, this same-vein spectacle was enough of a reminder that I didn’t really need to.

Dove does this ish all the time. Just like Coca Cola attaching Christmas-y human connection messages to their ads, Dove likes to do something similar: tell you how beautiful you are by publicly Punking other bishes who may or may not be actresses but are def getting paid to speak. It’s a great message, but they always do it in these heavily edited social experiment-y ways that feel… inauthentic. And contrived. And mayhaps a bit melodramatic, too – especially when it gets to the bit where they interview the ladies after the fact. I mean, you gotta wonder how Diane Sawyer level brutal the interviewer had to be (“And why didn’t you go through the door on the left? Were you unloved, neglected, and molested as a child? You were weren’t you? Shh shh.. It’s not your fault… ”) for that one chick to peer pitifully into the camera and say, “I wish I’d gone through the ‘beautiful’ door.” Like it’s anything more than a metaphor for herd mentality. I mean, that’s what followers do. If no one’s going on the left door, usually most people (unless you’re me – who makes a hobby outta picking apart the seams of reality the way a dope fiend does his mug sores) won’t want to step outside of the flock boundaries and veer toward the beauty entry.

In actuality, if it’d been me taking part in this, I wouldn’t have just gone through the left side. Not right away. And hilarious as that one chick was who just about-faced and ditched the building altogether, I wouldn’t have done that either. Well maybe for a moment – but only to come back with a pen, paper, and tape – so I could affix a sign to the right entry’s window that read: “Please use other door *insert smiley face…insert arrow pointing left*…”

‘cause, yeah. You are all beautiful. Whether it’s hidden or easily evident, whether you’re a li’l chubby ATM, or whether you’ve got that one horrible disease where 90% of your body’s covered in bubble skin, there’s a timeless kinda quality in all of us. One that can make even a sentient prune woman transcend a hypothetical slender Kate Upton on the beauty level – ’cause she puts on her habit and earns a Nobel Peace Prize for trying her hardest to alleviate the suffering of society.

That’s just truth.

We can each emanate badass beauty like that. And ya wanna know the best bit about it?

You don’t need a bar of Dove fckkng soap with pubes sticking outta it to make that fact any truer.

Think I’mma start a soap line of my own with this as the tagline:

You’re always ‘beautiful’.
But sometimes… you smell pretty bad.
Please buy my soap.
Loooove, Ashley

Which will be good, since I intend to call it “LoveAshley”.

(More of a command, than an exit salutation, really.)

Anyway, I think it’ll do pretty well.