War in the social media: On the one hand, the conservatives who cry out against the LGBT+ protagonists and on the other hand those who say that we must free ourselves from prejudice.
Advertising, however, has achieved its No. 1 goal.
If one wants to assess with relative sobriety the dimensions of the issue raised by Pantene in its latest - and already infamous - commercial, one has to take a step backwards. By stepping back from the acute, in many cases furious debate that has raged in recent days on social media around whether or not a film celebrating LGBTQ+ diversity should be widely shown, a much bigger and more complex picture is beginning to emerge. There it becomes clear that while the commercial is by far the most controversial element in Pantene's latest campaign, it is by no means the only one.
The revelation that behind the spot there is 20 years of psychosocial research at an international level - and in close cooperation with the parent company Procter & Gamble with one of the world's leading universities, the American Yale. This is a thoroughly scientific study, led by Professor of Psychology Marianne LaFrance, commissioned by Pantene, with the sole purpose of investigating the how much each person's character is affected by whether he/she feels beautiful, comfortable and so on with his/her scalp.
A second, very interesting component of the disruption caused by the commercial is that it confronts the public with a completely new reality in terms of social mores. For, until only a few years ago it was taken for granted that gender was a «two-two and something» based on sexual orientation, i.e. woman, man and (semi-officially) gay.
Now, however, gender identities have proliferated, have become specialised and the less informed are uncomfortable to admit that they are totally unaware of most of the novel gender definitions, their variations and subdivisions. Thanks to the hype caused by a commercial for a new line of shampoo, a large part of the public, possibly the majority, heard for the first time that the concept of, for example, «cisgender» exists.
On Pantene's Instagram account there is a quirky knowledge test. A piece of cardboard is given, from which a lock of hair protrudes. The «test taker» is asked to answer the same ever basic question («can you guess if this hair belongs to...»), but is required to choose one of two alternative properties each time. The Insta story presents on separate cards the percentages received by the pairs «woman - man», «lesbian - gay», «non binary and straight», «bi and cisgender», «transgender and instersex person», concluding with the slogan «whatever hair you dream of, we're here for you».
