Dove has a knack for nailing it with the poignant ads and they've done it again with their newest ad for their Father's Day Campaign to celebrate "#RealDadMoments."
The video is entitled "Calls For Dad" and features children calling out for their dads at various stages of life: Whether it be calling out for dad while stranded on the monkey bars or stranded by the side of the road, or being held in dad's arms in the pool or in his arms at the first dance at a wedding, all the moments are touching snapshots of what it means to be a dad.
I have to admit, I watched the video twice and got teary-eyed at the same point both times when this girl is crying and hugs her father. You got me, Dove!
In the press release for the campaign, Dove explained that the film "features real moments that children of all ages share with their fathers, most of which are regrettably absent from media depictions of dads today."
In the research Dove conducted leading up to the creation of the video, they found that roughly 74% of dads feel that they are "responsible for their child’s emotional well-being," but only 20% of dads felt their roles are accurately reflected in the media.
In their study, Dove found that, when asked to select which attributes best described the way dads are portrayed in the media, dads were mostly likely to pick "disconnected, bumbling and incompetent."
This touches on the larger issue of "dumb men advertising": the stereotyping of men in advertising as incompetent, especially with regards to domestic tasks.
Dads in particular take some pretty hard hits in commercials. You've seen the trope before: mom goes away for a weekend and it's instant pandemonium. Or the wife asks the husband to do a simple domestic task and all hell breaks loose.
In some ways, we expect dads, and moms to some extent, to be self-deprecating. We expect parents to be self-deprecating. You can't have too large a sense of pride once you've been covered wrist-to-elbow in baby poop or eaten a jar of baby food for breakfast because that's all there was to eat in the house. Parenthood is the ultimate ego-obliterating experience. In fact, the Dove ad sort of subtly touches on that concept in that the dads in the video are never really in focus or often have their backs turned to the camera. Being a dad is often a self-sacrificing position.
However, the "dumb dad" trope goes beyond that. It's a played out gender stereotype that is in no way helpful to the progression toward equality for either of the sexes.
It reinforces negative stereotypes about men being lazy, careless and incapable of domestic chores while re-asserting the outdated stereotype that women are meant to be the "maids" of the household. Neither stereotype is necessarily true and the prevalence of these depictions in the media is hurtful to both sexes.
Dove's "Calls For Dad' video is a step in the right direction for positive depictions of dads in the media. And if any of the moments stirred up memories of moments with your own dad, don't forget to let him know!
