Do you love Dove beauty soap?

Unilever and its host of beauty products make a big deal about how effective they are at keeping women's faces beautiful and young.

But on the other side of its beauty products commercials is the ugly reality that where and how it sources materials for its products is leaving horrendous scars on the planet.

Unilever has since dropped its Indonesian supplier of Palm Oil, Sinar Mas, but does that mean it is now on the straight and narrow as far as protecting the environment is concerned?

Does Pond's have cocaine in it?

I found this rather funny blogpost on Utak Pugita today.

The title of the post is "Pond's Reinvents Celine Lopez" and if you don't know who she is, then you probably weren't around when the Brian Gorrel bomb exploded on the Philippine blogosphere.

Luckily, there's a snippet about it on the post:

"CELINE LOPEZ, daughter of former Iloilo Rep. Albertito Lopez and Guimaras Rep. Emily Relucio, is now caught in a crossfire in the quarrel of two gay men, Australian landscape designer Brian Gorrell and Filipino lifestyle columnist DJ Montano.

Gorrell, who had since fled to Sydney, accused Montano of swindling him of money totaling US$70,000. From where he is, he opened a blog on 4 March 4 2008 where he maligns Montano and accuses his well-to-do friends, whom he identified as the Gucci Gang, of attempting to cover up the deed and striking back at him.

The controversy is now featured in Wikipedia, which noted that Gorrell’s blog ”has since become a major gossip topic in Philippines’ capital city Manila, exposing its high-society youths’ alleged freeloading lifestyle and addiction to COCAINE... "

Pond's institute has taken the initiative to revive the 90's lifestyle!

-- Source: Utak Pugita

Now, what does Celine Lopez have to do with Pond's?

Well, apparently, Pond's has taken on Celine Lopez as an image model of sorts:

Local fashion’s known druggies come together to represent the limited edition Pond’s Plains & Prints collection... Model-columnists and best friend of the notorious DJ Montano, Celine Lopez leads tha pact as well as "self proclaimed" real estate goddess and "party animal" Divine Lee. Others include has been model Apples Aberin, lifestyle writer "kuno" Patty Betita,  interior designer (not certified) Mai Kaufmann, and "makeup artist" Bianca Valerio.

-- Source  Utak Pugita

Pond's is a brand of Unilever, the foreign multinational colossus that spends billions of pesos in advertising in the Philippines.

To me, that's enough money to make any company and any product the apple of everybody's eye.  At least in a PR sense, no news program or current affairs show will talk about what the company is doing wrong lest Unilever pulls out its ads from the TV station or Newspaper.

I mean, never mind that it's latest commercial showing an apple turning brown is absolutely misleading.

As any kid from a good private school will tell you, halved APPLES will TURN BROWN if you leave the flesh exposed in the air -- whether or not you put anything the exposed flesh.

As if we don't have enough problems as it is with our public education system, Unilever has by itself wrecked the chemistry education of millions of public school children.