There’s something seriously wrong with Dove’s #ChooseBeautiful campaign
DOVE’S new #ChooseBeautiful campaign has people fired up, including Jo Stanley, who says it represents everything wrong with the beauty industry.
I’M so bored with being concerned about how I look.
It’s probably 30 years since I first looked in the mirror and wondered if what I saw was acceptable, and I’m sick of it. But, like many women, I don’t know how to stop it (couldn’t we all just hold hands and promise never to wax again?), so I’m right on target for the two most recent Dove Real Beauty Campaigns.
The first is from France. Inspired by the brutal way women talk about themselves, #OneBeautifulThought asked “real” women to write their innermost thoughts about their appearance. Actors then delivered those same darkest feelings to each other, over coffee in a quaint Parisian cafe, with the original women looking on in faux shock at how cruel their own words are when said out loud.
Although it looks as contrived as it sounds, the message is clear, and important. If it’s not acceptable to say it to someone else, why say it to ourselves?
I know, through years of anxiety and accompanying therapy, how damaging my own thoughts can be. (Although if my negative self-talk was magically translated into French I would find it much more palatable.) And I know I’m not alone. We all torture ourselves. It starts somewhere around puberty, when we decide our best friend has much nicer hair than ours, and when we learn to compare ourselves with the images of beauty we are bombarded with in our media by the beauty industry – OF WHICH DOVE IS A MAJOR PLAYER (apols for the caps, I’m emotional).
I agree it is vital that we learn to be compassionate towards ourselves, to replace the self-hatred with self-love. But should that message come from a company who are complicit in the very industry that fuelled our inner torment in the first place? It feels so manipulative. So blatantly duplicitous. And kind of patronising.
The second little ripper from Dove is the #ChooseBeautiful campaign. In this social experiment, Dove has taken over doorways all over the world and labelled one ‘average’ and the other ‘beautiful’. So then women entering the building had to choose how they describe themselves – ‘average’ or ‘beautiful’ – by walking through the appropriately labelled door. Of course, q’uelle surprise, the majority are unable to walk through the ‘beautiful’ door.
Same Dove Campaign elements apply: “real” women being confronted with a truth about their own body image that is both sad and inspiring in its honesty, day-dreamy keyboard soundtrack, a distant pensive gaze off into the distance as though the poor woman’s forgotten her own name.
And accompanying research for good measure, in this instance saying 96% of women surveyed (although it doesn’t say how many were surveyed or from where so it could have been 12 women from the ad agency) said they didn’t see themselves as beautiful.
Well a big hurrumph to that. Why do I need to see myself as Beautiful? If you didn’t ask me, I might not even have ever thought to put myself in that context. Thanks for bringing it up, now here comes the negative self-talk all over again. And you’re only giving me a choice between Beautiful and Average? If I don’t choose either what do I do? Pace outside the building like a vampire on True Blood, waiting to be invited in?
I need other doors, other options. Where’s the Funny doorway? Or Clever or Compassionate? Why can’t I #ChooseStrong? Or #ChooseExcellentListener? When are we going to value qualities we can strive for and that will benefit others, rather than aesthetic qualities we were lucky enough to be born with and that really only benefit ourselves?
Beyond this, the problem isn’t that women can’t see themselves as beautiful. The problem is that the use of the word beautiful is relating only to the physical. The emphasis is on a body conscious version of the word, and that is so limiting. And boring.
There are so many more fascinating ways for beauty to manifest itself. The way someone loves is beautiful. Kindness is beautiful. Generosity, laughter, joy, freedom of spirit, enlightenment, a brilliant mind – all beautiful. In fact, in my opinion you can’t be physically beautiful without those things. I reckon half an hour chatting to Naomi Campbell would demonstrate that.
As I said, I’m no different to any of the women in these ads. My sense of self is so caught up in my appearance I’d have to go blind to extricate myself from it (and even then I’d be asking my husband does my bum look big in this). But as I get older, I can feel myself starting to recognise a different beauty in the mirror. The beauty that comes from wisdom, gratitude and self-belief. And a healthy dose of who-the-hell-cares. That’s #OneBeautifulThought.
What do you think? Let us know in the comments below.