How Marc Jacobs' perfume ad perpetuates fake diversity

Stephen H. Provost is the author of “50 Undefeated,” a celebration of people in history who’ve overcom prejudice, bigotry and bullying. It’s available on Amazon.

Today’s topic is an ad for a “fragrance” (that’s a euphemism for “perfume” that’s supposed to make it sound fancier and classier) called “Perfect.”

On the face of it, the 15-second spot seems very inclusive. Diverse. That’s the point, according to the company: to create “a vibrant collage of portraits and vignettes that showcase the contrasting beauty and individuality of the cast.”

The women in the ad aren’t classical beauties, according to the traditional Western definition. But they’re beautiful, nonetheless. The idea is to challenge our cultural bias regarding what’s beautiful and encourage us to broaden our narrow — and grossly inadequate — concept on beauty.

I applaud the goal.

But then the ad pulls the rug out from under itself at the very end. After treating us to a diverse array of beautiful women in for a split-second each, the camera closes by lingering on... you guessed it: A young, white woman who’s the very definition of classical Western beauty, posing with a bottle of said “fragrance.”

To be clear, I’m not one of those people so absorbed with the guilt of privilege that I think every lead actor in an ad campaign (or a movie or book, for that matter) needs to be a woman or a person of color. But if you’re making it a point to say “the classical definition of beauty is too narrow,” you don’t create an ad that reinforces that definition by driving it home at the very end.

It’s as if someone made a company video about inclusion that featured a number of people of color, women, and LGBTQIA individuals, only to conclude it with the smiling face of a 60-year-old white male holding a sign that reads, “This is what diversity looks like.”

The implication is that the women in that “vibrant collage of portraits” are just a supporting cast for the star of the show: the young, white, “classical Western” beauty posing with the product at the end.

Progress? What progress?

More than half a century ago, a man named Gene Roddenberry created a groundbreaking science fiction show about the diverse crew of a starship on a mission to explore the galaxy. The crew included a Japanese helmsman, an alien science officer, an engineer with a heavy Scots accent, a black African communications officer, and a Russian. The captain was a hyper-masculine white male in the classical Western tradition.

To reiterate, this was 55 years ago. It aired during an era of protest against inequality in the form of segregation, redlining, police brutality, and sexism. This was the era of Vietnam, Stonewall, Freedom Rides, and the March on Washington.

Since then, the franchise spawned by that show has featured starship captains who broke from that tradition: A Black man, a woman, a middle-aged bald guy.

And after all that, we once again live in an era of civil protest against inequality, expressed in the same way it was back then. It’s no wonder.

Is an ad campaign for a fragrance responsible for this? Of course not, but it is a symptom of the problem: the idea that, if we “allow” people who don’t fit the dominant definition of beauty a supporting role, we’ve done enough. We’ve checked the “diversity box” and can declare the problem solved.

Here’s the plain truth: Doing that doesn’t even meet the bare minimum. If you doubt this, remember: In 2008, our country did what Marc Jacobs refused to do. We elected a Black American president of the United States. And even that wasn’t enough to solve the problem. It was a first step, but one that produced a fierce backlash — the kind of backlash that, perhaps, Marc Jacobs didn’t want to risk by putting nontraditional beauty front and center.

Instead of presenting its perfume as one that “celebrates self-acceptance and originality,” its declared goal, the ad reinforces the opposite. It tells us that self-acceptance only goes so far, and originality will never merit anything more than a supporting role in our society — and will only be allowed if it reinforces the status quo.

You call that “Perfect”? I call it a sham.