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Gazeta Wyborcza is once again heroically forging the way forward in enlightening the benighted masses of Poland. This time the subject is GMOs. To the journalists’ dismay, most Poles don’t want them. In today’s paper Konrad Niklewicz has a short think piece on page two about the question: GW has been debating the subject for the last two weeks but what is really needed is a public information campaign. Who should organize it? The government? No (“niekoniecznie”). The problem with the government is that some of its members are opposed to GMOs. Also, its election promises included hostility to transgenetically modified plants. Niklewicz, therefore, rules them out. The initiative, instead, lies with industry and its related GMO lobby. So it’s okay for those with a vested interest in pushing GMOs to inform us about them but it is not okay for those who are opposed, even if they do happen to be our democratically elected representatives.

While we’re at it, why not have a chemicals and cosmetics company lead the public information campaign on the beauty myth? Or let the cigarette industry inform us about the dangers of smoking…

Niklewicz writes that BASF earned 57.9 billion euros last year. Just 1% of that would buy a lot of “study and education,” he writes, though he doesn’t put the words in inverted commas. By an extraordinary coincidence, BASF has an ad on page seven of the paper. Perhaps the company has already started informing us about GMO.

Unilever’s campaign for real profits continues. A full page advertisement appears in the women’s supplement to Gazeta Wyborcza. It includes a picture of the masterminds of this operation. In case the irony is not abundantly clear, I’ll put “masterminds” in inverted commas. These are in fact the Polish drones, acting on instructions from Higher Up, in Western Europe, or possibly the States, wherever it is those clever people from Unilever think up their schemes. Six women are pictured. They are, from left to right, the “face” (but don’t worry, the pic includes her body too) of the campaign, the product’s PR woman, the campaign’s “ambassador,” two marketing bods, and Katarzyna Figura, a Polish actress. The point of this campaign is to stress that fat, ugly and old people can also contribute to Unilever’s shareholders’ dividends by buying chemical potions and slathering them on their sagging, flabby and inferior skin. And it’s true, the ambassador is quite rotund. But the rest of the plain ordinary, not particularly beautiful folk? In a radical departure from type the two marketing women are young blondes with – I’m just describing what I see – large busts. The PR woman might, at a stretch, if you were particularly mean, be described as merely “okay.” The “face” of the campaign is a stunner (in the spirit of accepting herself for what she is, she has changed her hair colour since her picture was put up on the campaign’s homepage). And Kasia Figura? This is Kasia Figura. Hideous, isn’t she?

Not one of the pictured women could by any violent gymnastics of the imagination be described as “old” or “ugly.” Unlike you, you tubby old boot.

Unilever’s public-spirited campaign to make women feel the need to purchase their beauty products continues. The latest manoeuvre is an interview on the subject of beauty and self-esteem with a sociologist in Wysokie Obcasy, the teeth-grindingly awful ladies’ weekend supplement to the crusading Gazeta Wyborcza. This colour magazine specialises in finding women who are (or were) successful in some field or other but have not received the recognition they deserve due to the patriarchal nature of society. They then present their stories in such a way as to turn you forever against their subjects.

The interview is entitled “Kraj brzydkich kobiet?” (Land of Ugly Women?). Note that question mark well. If it were missing the newspaper could be accused of lowering women’s self-esteem in an effort to get them to compensate by buying Unilever products. And that wouldn’t be very feminist, would it? But there is a question mark so the sisters can read on, confident of finding a thoughtful, patriarchy-challenging insight into the beauty myth, the manipulation of women’s self-image by advertisers and the— oh, this is just shooting fish in a barrel. One sentence from the accompanying graphic is enough to show the bankruptcy and complete lack of understanding of the working of language in the publication:

“Prawdziwe Pi?kno. Pod takim has?em ruszy?a w Polsce kampania marki D., kt�ra ma na celu wsparcie kobiet w budowaniu poczucia akceptacji w?asnej urody i osobowo?ci.
True Beauty. This is the motto of the Polish D. campaign, whose aim is to support women in building a sense of acceptation of their own beauty and personality.

The by-line is “BOSA”* but it could have been written in Unilever GHQ: the claim that the campaign is to support women (and not to sell soap, for example) is presented as fact. How does BOSA know this? Where is the scepticism proper to journalism? Where the evidence that this is in fact the purpose of Unilever’s ad campaign?Accompanying the interview are pictures of two models from the Unilever ad campaign. Immediately after the interview is a full page advertisement for one of Unilever’s products. In the succeeding pages are two half-page ads in the “True Beauty” campaign. Unilever is playing WO like a cheap banjo. Or so I hope.

*The interviewer in the main article (which wild horses will not induce me to read) is Katarzyna Bosacka.

A soap maker named Unilever is trying to start a debate about beauty in Poland. The back page of this weekend’s Gazeta Wyborcza is entirely given over to an advertis– sorry, a manifesto about “real beauty.” (Fair play to GW: it is clearly marked advertisement.) Straight away there is something suspiciously close to a tautology: “The canon of womanly beauty has for too long been shaped by the image (wizerunek) of emaciated models.” Thinness is the canon, a canon, which, I suspect, is shaped not by images or visions but by real people: designers, advertisers, manufacturers of beauty products and so forth. (One of the people featured in the “debate” on their website is a stylist and designer.)

But the most interesting thing about this odious document is its use and abuse of the simple little word “we.” The second sentence says women all over the world have been giving clear signals that they want a change. Furthermore, “A my je w tym popieramy” (And we support them in this ). Here, “we” (”my”) clearly means Unilever. (I say “clearly,” but actually the word “Unilever” does not appear anywhere in the adv– sorry, manifesto.) However, the advertesto continues “Jeste?my przekonane, ?e…” The grammatical form here (”przekonane”, not “przekonani”) indicates that “we” refers to women, i.e. not to Unilever. And so it goes: “we” want to live genuinely, “we” want to regain our self-confidence, “we” want to feel beautiful regardless of our age.

The cynicism of this marketing ploy is betrayed in every sentence. “We believe that every centimetre of our body, from top to bottom, deserves less criticism and more love.” In this sentence is an implied criticism, and a harsh one at that: you (not “we”) don’t love yourself enough. If you really loved yourself you would buy our soap.
“We want to regain self-confidence and self respect” implies: you lack these qualities. Buy our soap.
“We want to be able to say ‘I like myself the way I am’” implies: you do not like yourself the way you are. Buy our soap.
“Standing before the mirror we want to be able to laugh and treat our wrinkles and imperfections with approbation and a smile” implies: you do not now like to look at yourself in the mirror. You have imperfections. Buy our soap.
“We want to learn to accept our womanhood” implies: you think you might be a man. Buy our soap.
“We want to live genuinely” implies: you are living a lie. Buy our soap.
“Join the debate.” Buy our soap.
Fatso.