Dove has a new ad campaign about how to be a mother.
The theme of the campaign is:
There's no right or wrong way to be a mom -- only your way.
A hell of a lot of people disagree with that statement.
The advertisement displays mothers break dancing, rock climbing, farming, raising a child alone, even being transgender.
Shea is a graduate student. She has a woman partner.
We are both his biological parents. You get people who are like, ’What do you mean, you’re the mom?’ [and] we’re like… ’Yep, we’re both going to be moms.'
There’s no one right way to do it all.
--Shea
Kudos to the brand for not only being LGBTQ inclusive, but for being willing to think beyond the more common solution of showing a cisgender two-mom couple (much as I love seeing LGBTQ parents of any type on my screen). (Side note: Not all transgender women who are parents go by “Mom,” as singer Laura Jane Grace recently reminded us. I’d suggest asking for someone’s preferred parenting title just as you’d ask for their pronouns.)
--Dana Rudolph, Mombian
There’s a stay-at-home mother named Jazzie, a dance instructor and breakdancer named Elise, a cattle rancher named Cassidy, a tech manager and single mother named Seung, rock climber Jackie and transgender grad student Shea. Each has a different approach to parenting that shows the expansiveness of the “real mom” title.
Shea’s role in the ad has already generated both praise and controversy for Dove. While it’s perhaps a fair criticism that Shea’s partner seems to be the only mother in the ad not given a name or speaking lines, some viewers have taken offense that she refers to herself as a “mother” at all.
The ad campaign promotes the Baby Dove line of products.