Advice from Dove Chocolates

            Advertisements, while a seemingly-omnipresent aspect of our modern lives, have often struck me as bafflingly stupid.  Last year in San Francisco, for example, every public bus seemed to have a picture of a disembodied hand reaching for a box of McDonald’s french fries, next to the logo, “Gotta have it.” 

This picture might, actually, be a concise representation of obsession—the mindless hand, the fries seemingly accessible but always barely out of reach.  I found it interesting as an allegory of consumerism—but why on earth would anyone think that it would make me want to eat more fries?  Am I supposed to react as if that hand were about to steal my fries?

I grew up almost without television: all we had was a shoddy antenna connection that, on a lucky day, got three channels.  It was enough for my dad to watch the occasional football game, and for me, joy of joys, to sometimes catch an episode of The Simpsons.  I watched plenty of movies (VHS), but there’s no business like TV-show business for propaganda.  Since I didn’t get a crash course in marketing ploys as a kid, I spend most of the time I’m subjected to commercials staring like a bewildered foreigner.

            There’s one commercial currently running, in fact, that consists of about thirty seconds of women screaming.  These women are shopping—and because they didn’t shop at JCPenney (we are asked to believe), they get such wretched deals that they want to do nothing with their lives but shriek themselves hoarse.  That commercial just makes me want to scream as well—not hit up the discount department stores.  From the perspective of JCPenney, this seems counterproductive.

            In fact, I’m much more likely to make a mental note not to buy the products of advertisements I see, just because the assumptions they make piss me off.  Why do commercials assume that, because I’m female, I would be mortified to be seen in public with slightly blemished skin? 

One thing I’m most likely to crave, however—be its advertisements as moronic (or ironic) as they will—is dark chocolate. 

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I admit it: I’m among the many Americans with a chocolate addiction.  Dark chocolate is the way I roll; and staying at Greg’s house, there’s always a secret supply of Dove dark chocolates in the kitchen pantry.  Normally I wouldn’t trust a chocolatier whose other main product is soap, but these little foil-wrapped candies are special.  The reason that they’re special is that they give terrible advice.

Unwrap a Dove chocolate, and the inside of the wrapper is bound to say something like, “Indulge every whim.”

Oh really, Dove?  Every whim?  What if I had the whim to buy a VW bus, pick up a load of quirky hitchhikers, and head down to Tijuana to start a cult based on the worship of Cool Ranch Doritos?  What if I had the whim to try to control parakeets with telepathy?  What if I (gasp) had the whim to give up chocolate?

Another enthusiastic little confection told me, “You’re delicious.”

            Perhaps they mean ‘delicious’ in a perfectly innocent sense.  Perhaps it isn’t a threat of cannibalism.  Speaking as a person who’s read a lot of pulp fiction in her life, however, I could point out that “you’re delicious” is something vampires say to the ingénues they stalk through the night.

Then there are the obviously untrue statements.  Example: “Calories only exist if you count them.”

Oh, okay.  So if I eat only chocolate, but forget how to do math, I’ll never gain weight.  That’s like saying, “My boyfriend only exists while he sleeps if I’m watching.”  It sounds, in fact, like overwrought philosophy:

“I, the Self, am the center of the Universe, and the Universe had no reality separate from my perception of it…”  Yech.  Did I mention that philosophy is one of my least favorite subjects? 

            Some of the Dove aphorisms are unexpectedly depressing.  “Chocolate won’t let you down,” they say. 

I read that aloud to Greg, and he grabbed my arm.  “Chocolate’s always there for you,” he insisted in a tearful voice.  

“Chocolate won’t leave you,” I added, with the same level of drama.  “Not like you’re bastard husband.” 

Chocolate won’t wreck your car, and then flake out on child support.  “Chocolate,” Dove tells us, “loves unconditionally.”

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            The Dove wrappers are optimistic, misguided, and insidious.  Perhaps, however, I’ve underestimated them.  Perhaps they'd stumbled upon the most clever marketing ploy of all: I did eat a tremendous amount of those little confections while writing this post.  And now that you know they exist, you’ll be tempted by Dove chocolates every time you pass them in the store.

            Well played, you soap-makers.  Well played.