Dove Real Beauty Sketches
We’ve long been a fan of the “Real Beauty” campaigns of Dove skin care products. The company saw a surge in popularity when it introduced its ads of women of all shapes and ages wearing nothing but white underwear and beautiful smiles.
Most recently, Dove has launched another self-esteem-based campaign called “Real Beauty Sketches,” which reveals that women are often their own harshest critics.
The video features FBI forensic sketch artist Gil Zamora demonstrating the disparity between how women describe themselves versus how others see them. Zamora does one sketch based on how a woman describes herself (“”I kind of have a fat, rounder face”, “I would say I have a pretty big forehead…”) and one based on how a complete stranger describes her (“She had blue eyes, very nice blue eyes”, “Cute nose…”). The different results are startling—the portraits created from women’s description of themselves are definitely less flattering than the ones created from others’ descriptions.
When they see the sketches, some of the participants become quite emotional. “I should be more grateful of my natural beauty,” one woman confesses. “It impacts the friends that we make, the jobs we apply for, how we treat our children. It impacts everything.”
Florence's view of herself on the left; the view of a stranger is on the right
With the message, “You are more beautiful than you think,” this latest campaign hopes to positively impact the negative way that women view themselves physically.
