No more use of word ‘Normal’ by Unilever on the walk of all-embracing beauty

The latest news from the London based conglomerate, Unilever is that they will stop using the word ‘Normal’ in their beauty and personal care products to reconcile with their consumers and audience.

Maker of Sunsilk and Lux, Unilever is all set to break the shackles of stereotyping by giving up all the marketeering tactics that creates a standard ‘Normal’ in the viewers’ mind. They will also stop digitally modifying model’s body shape or skin color to pursue an all-inclusive approach for branding.

Though Unilever has stated that just abstaining from using the word ‘normal’ won’t mend the fence, they consider this to be an important step towards an all-embracing concept of beauty as mentioned by Sunny Jain, the firm’s president of the beauty and personal care division.

The owner had to change its popular product’s name ‘fair and lovely’ to ‘Glow and Lovely’ to tackle the displeased audience last year.

The recent incidents of audience skirmish over images glamorizing white women’s hair as “normal” and African black hair as “dry and damaged” made Unilever to withdraw its Tresemme haircare products from the South African retail stores for 10 days to express contrition.

The word ‘normal” is used on various products like shampoos, face wash and conditioners, to describe the product qualities, e.g. ‘Normal to dry’ skin/hair etc.  The brand will re-label them as ‘dry and damaged’ or ‘grey hair’ depending upon the specific qualities customers are looking for.

Unilever is set upon to smash all the stereotypes which has been made obvious by the firm’s project #Showus, which curated the world’s largest image library with more than 5000 photos of women and beyond binary individuals, depicting their own sense of beauty.

Another example of this would be the #Freetolove campaign by Closeup, taking up the issue of freedom to love, disregarding the societal pressure, religious disparity, judgements or class divides.

The brand has pledged to adopt a more inclusive vision of beauty to not just do less harm but to do more good by giving up the concept of ‘normal’ or ‘abnormal’ and by building body confidence in its adverts.