bossanovagirl

Yes, maybe I am NOT the target audience for this.
http://www.veoh.com/videos/v15648938YgMYS9rT

Was driving down Marcos Highway this morning, and as I approached the Katipunan Avenue-Aurora Boulevard intersection and saw the billboard, I said to myself “But, really, isn’t the concept of a dream date just a bit backward?”

I could imagine girls in poodle skirts and bobby socks on dream dates with Juancho Gutierrez (may he rest in peace) and Pepito Rodriguez–the clean-cut matinee idols of my mom’s generation–in a world that was laid-back and naive and pure.

But hasn’t a lot happened since that time? Isn’t a campaign like this rather a disservice to womankind? To my knowledge women have gone so far with their fight for equality and have accomplished so many things by leaps and bounds. Women have already travelled in space, for goodness’ sake. Women now rule nations, head corporations, make scientific discoveries, and every day they are making decisions that matter. Dream dates, I believe, are a throwback to that era that was ushered in by the introduction of the television, where the moving pictures on the small screen were still a novelty that had only begun to be enjoyed within the comforts of the home. The idea of romance embodied itself back then in the form of tall, dark and handsome men like Cary Grant and his ilk. With the advent of digital technology, people realized how easily illusory worlds can be conjured, and shams were effortlessly manufactured as quickly as they were exposed. The fast-changing times brought about developments as much as an increasing amount of healthy skepticism in mankind.

Dream dates hark back to a world that still believed in fairy tales. But even children’s books now don’t talk much anymore about fairy tales. Children’s books nowadays talk about of sibling rivalry, insecurities, parental separation, sexual orientation, marginalization, illness, death, intolerance, abuse. Because authors of children’s books have realized that there is a need for a discussion of real-life issues; publishers of children’s books have realized that there is a market bought about by an increasing demand for books that can help set the kids up for coping with the real world.

How come there still are advertising campaigns like this? And, in the first place, how come corporations still manufacture whitening products? Don’t get me wrong, I am still undeniably a child of consumerist culture, after all. But for all my cynicism, I still buy into campaigns that celebrate women and beauty as Dove, Nike Women and Olay (haha!) as the next girl. With regard Olay, my explanation is this: we now live in very toxic times, and a girl like me needs all the help she can get to protect herself from the ravages of a polluted environment. And Olay is the most affordable solution I can find. So there. I have no issues about beauty products per se, but only with products that I think are off-sync with the times.

I thought nobody believed anymore in Cinderella stories, much less dream dates.Or so I thought, till this morning.

Where does the concept of “dream date” fit today? Just the awkward name of the promo itself is so hopelessly an anachronism in these times of Oprah and Tyra Banks and other TV high priestesses advocating the expansion of beauty ideals to embrace all ethnicities, ages, body types and persuasions.

I struggled through adolescence and early adulthood thinking I was ugly. Blame it on Phoebe Cates and Brooke Shields and my collection of Seventeen mags because they messed me up. It had been a long–often arduous–journey for me to come to terms with my self-image. Now, happily, with all that angst shucked in my past, I am more comfortable in my own skin; I believe you can only be as beautiful as you feel inside. I believe that when you believe you are beautiful, you make other people feel the same way about you, too.

“Pinkish white skin” is the product promise. I will not even bother to comment if I find this claim believable. It is a promo to push the sales of jars (or is it bottles? tubes?) of Ponds White Beauty. For lack of creativity perhaps or–as I would much prefer to cut the copywriter some slack–for lack of flexibility due to the insistence of the client, the words “pinkish white”–the product benefit–was slapped onto the promo title.

Ponds Pinkish White Dream Date.

The mere sound of it makes me shudder.

But, worse than that, I cringe because I believe it perpetuates a culture of shallowness.