Say what you want about Dove, but the beauty company does have a pretty good track record of creating ads that include women rarely seen in advertising from plus-size to the blind.
For its latest campaign, #RealMoms, a new commerical features a transgender woman named Shea alongside her partner. In it, the lesbian couple takes care of their son amidst the complex and tiresome treatment that transgender women face when entering motherhood.
“We are both his biological parents,” Shea explains. “You get people that are like, ‘What do you mean, you’re the mom?’”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dE9AnU3MaI
Of course, Dove’s ad campaigns have come under fire for being less inclusive too—from patronizing women to racism with white-centric messages. And yeah, advertising to LGBTQ viewers follows a long and troubled pattern called “marketplace queerness,” where corporations sell products to LGBTQ demographics (or allied demographics) without actually doing much for queer and trans Americans.
However, transgender people are rarely featured in ads or television programs today, making the #RealMoms commercial a pretty significant step forward for the company. Not to mention, discussions on trans parents are virtually nonexistent in mainstream media, making the campaign one of the first to represent trans parents in general.
