Marketing Monday: Vera Wang Princess Perfume and Advertising To Teenage Girls

A bit of a break from my normal format, I decided to do a critique of a web advertisement I saw.

The other week, I was looking at Too Cute Tuesday directions on the Instructables website when I came across this ad:

Are you kidding me? If a company is going to sexualize young girls, can't they at least be discreet?

Is that a teenage girl, lying on a bed? I thought I would click through to the website, thinking maybe this wasn’t being marketed to teenage girls.

A diary? Cursive writing? OK, I guess this perfume is for a younger audience as expected...

It doesn’t take a marketing person to see exactly who this site is meant to attract. In cases like these, I hate being wrong.

I know that Zoe Kravitz, the model, is 21 years old and can do whatever she likes but come on. That look. On a bed. Looking like she’s wrapped in sheets )€” until you look close and see that it might be a dress. (This is confirmed in a larger format photograph but still,why did I even have to wonder if she was naked?)

I looked for other people talking about this ad. All I found was a handful of bloggers who sounded like they were quoting a press release about being excited about the new line and enjoying the vanilla and fruity notes of the fragrance. I was starting to feel a bit crazy. Am I getting old and being a stick in the mud about this?

I posed the ad to Facebook, just to see reaction of my friends. Here are a few that reflect the overall sentiment:

My friend Jen, who has a teenage daughter: OMG!!! That is crazy…way to sexualize a 15 year old! Gross

My friend Norah, who is raising a teenage son and daughter: Very tricky raising a daughter with this sort of thing in their face all the time. A bit rough on the sons too.

And my friend Bob, who is a therapist: I’m afraid we’ve become desensitized–being bombarded with this inappropriate stuff all the time. I’m with you…

But this isn’t just about Vera Wang Princess perfume. This is a symptom of a larger problem.

My friend Alison linked me to this movie, America the Beautiful, a documentary made a couple years ago.

If you didn’t watch the trailer, my punched-in-the-gut feeling came from the model who spoke: “If you’re worried about your health, go to college.” Wow.

To learn more about the documentary, visit their website.

And to take the idea of princess further, I found a fabulous blog post at Stileto Revolt about the ‘princess complex’, or the idea that some man will magically rescue us girls and give us some life we are entitled to:

“While fantasies are often harmless fun, they become unhealthy when they distort your perception of reality, or set up unrealistic expectations of yourself and others. The aesthetic of fairy tales can be charming, the escapist ideal of “riding off into the sunset” can be entertaining for a moment, but these must be kept in perspective so as not to stunt emotional growth or breed mental illness.

Unfortunately, as long as people grasp at a sugar-coated version of reality, companies will find a way to profit from it. In this modern day fairy tale, it seems the only thing living “happily ever after” is capitalism…”

Click here to see the original blog post with a ton of images from advertising supporting this idea.

In short, it’s time for us to accept how we look. I’m working on it but most of the time, I figure if I’m happy, healthy, and able to run a 5K, I am good with how I look.

And to those of you raising or working with kids in this environment, I applaud you and hope you especially can come to accept your looks. Keep fighting the good fight everyone and maybe, next time an ad campaign like this comes around, there will be a few more people who speak up.