• Los Angeles Times, Wednesday, October 10, 2007 12:30 PM

The Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood accuses Unilever of hypocrisy for Axe advertising that it says "blatantly objectifies and degrades" women at the same time that its Dove campaign praises women and their natural beauty. It has launched a letter-writing effort on its Web site and demanded that the company pull its Axe ads.

Axe's U.S. Web site says that women turn into "lust-crazed vixens" around men wearing Axe, whose fragrance "acts upon the female libido and stimulates the clothing-removal section of the female brain." Unilever shouldn't be commended for Dove's "Campaign for Real Beauty" while promoting products with a starkly different message, says Susan Linn, the consumer group's director and an instructor in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.

Kelly O'Keefe, a professor at the Virginia Commonwealth University AdCenter, says Unilever is "playing with fire" if it thinks that the divergence "wouldn't be picked up on at some point." Unilever spokeswoman Anita Larson says the Axe ads are clearly spoofs, while the Dove campaign is serious and "dedicated to making women feel more beautiful."

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