Dove is encouraging women to embrace their grey hair
By Joshua Djaba on Wednesday, August 24, 2022
Dove is encouraging women to embrace their grey hair in a new campaign designed to fight age-based discrimination.
The campaign comes just a week after Lisa LaFlamme- a Canadian journalist and longtime TV anchor and senior editor of the country’s popular news program CTV National News- reportedly lost her job over her decision to stop dying her hair. The Globe and Mail reported that a senior executive at the network shockingly asked “who had approved the decision to ‘let Lisa’s hair go grey’”.
Dove, who have built their brand on diversity and inclusivity- through campaigns such as last year’s ‘Reverse Selfie’ campaign designed to combat social media image retouching- announced today that it’s ‘going grey’, as it changed its usual gold logo to grey. In an Instagram post, the brand said: “Women with grey hair are being aged out of the workplace, so Dove is going grey.”
Laura Douglas, Dove Canada’s master brand manager, explained where this most recent effort fits into Dove’s wider social efforts to encourage beauty in all its diverse ways: “There is a lot of discussion about ageism right now and Dove wanted to harness that energy for good. Dove has been committed to making a positive experience of beauty available for all women for the past 60 years. We do this both by taking concrete actions towards beauty inclusiveness for all women and self-esteem for girls.”
“The Dove #KeepTheGrey campaign,” says Douglas, “aims to rally support for women from being aged out, often in the prime of their careers, because they’ve chosen to wear their hair grey.”
And lest anyone accuse the brand of hollow virtue signalling, Dove has not only made the symbolic change to their logo, but is also donating $100,000 to Catalyst, a global nonprofit organization founded by feminist writer Felice Schwartz, committed to making workplaces everywhere more inclusive for women.
