The vast majority of advertisements promoting women’s products contribute to unrealistic standards of beauty in western society. Dove, however, has launched an advertising campaign dedicated to both promoting a healthy body image among women as well as raising awareness about how media and advertising distort standards for physical attractiveness. Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty mission statement is, “to make more women feel beautiful every day by widening stereotypical views of beauty”. In addition to their television commercials, which intentionally depict women of normal and healthy body proportions, the Dove website also includes a number of articles and film clips aimed at educating and advising girls and women about topics such as “real beauty” and “self-esteem”.

One of the film clips, titled “Evolution”, depicts a model undergoing the beautification process before a photo shoot. While the model looks like a fairly average woman in the opening frames, the next minute and fourteen seconds fast-forwards through the surprising number of steps taken to cover up and alter the model’s flaws and natural characteristics. A team of makeup artists put layers of makeup on her face and styles her hair to perfection. Following the shoot, the photos are further “enhanced” on a computer program, where the advertisers enlarge her lips and eyes, lengthen her neck, slim down her face, decrease the size of her ears, adjust the placement of her hair and highlight certain parts of her face. The video then cuts to the altered photo of the model on a billboard advertising  women’s make-up foundation. The woman on the billboard looks nothing like the woman shown at the beginning of the clip. The clip ends with the phrase, “No wonder our perception of beauty is so distorted,” in the center of a black screen.

WCI applauds the work of Dove, which has been an innovator in the development of advertising strategies that educate women about beauty in the media, promote positive body image and encourage women to expand their own definitions of beauty.  To read more about the Campaign for Real Beauty go to: http://www.dove.us/#/cfrb/

“Evolution” http://www.dove.us/#/features/videos/default.aspx[cp-documentid=7049579]/

“Campaign for Real Beauty Mission” http://www.dove.us/#/CFRB/arti_cfrb.aspx[cp-documentid=7049726]/