Dove Real Beauty Campaign: Can the Beauty Industry Scrap Its Own Standards of Beauty?

Beauty, as we all know, is in the eye of the beholder. That doesn't just mean it's the opinion of any particular individual: standards of beauty are also culturally determined. What is considered attractive in Rwanda, Vietnam or Argentina is not the same as what we find beautiful in North America, and one look at classical Baroque paintings will confirm that the ideal woman's body has drastically changed since the 17th century.

But globalism is quickly making culturally diverse standards of beauty a thing of the past. International beauty pageants demonstrate an ever-increasing similarity between women from around the world, and a narrowing of the possible types of beauty: they are tall, they are thin, their hair is shiny and straight, their teeth are capped and gleaming, and they even increase or reduce the pigment in their skin. Beauty, in these competitions, is not something that emerges organically from a culture. It is a cookie-cutter image imposed from above.

The modelling and fashion industries have also taken a lot of flack for imposing unrealistic standards of beauty on the world's population. However, this is precisely what advertising is in the business of doing: creating unified images of beauty that attract and appeal to a wide range of people. Thus, Calvin Klein ads have anemic waifs lounging in black-and-white; United Colors of Benetton ads, an international cast of models who look like anthropomorphic crayons; and Dove... a duck?

Well, that's how it used to be, anyway.

A few years back Dove scrapped their old campaign and went for a whole new look. After launching the Real Beauty Campaign along with Dove's new Self-Esteem Fund, the company began to define itself in a whole new way. Dove has taken up the gender torch, championing the need to recognize the insecurities of every-woman, while single-handedly battling the rest of the advertising industry with their do-gooder appeal. Marking a new era, Dove has tried to change advertisements which have for decades told women they can never be thin enough, young enough, glossy,shiny and svelte enough.

But the story is not as simple as it might seem. Dove is still a company, aggressively participating in the competitive beauty industry, and is still telling women how they should look. They have just chosen an ingeniously paradoxical approach: using the master's tools, so to speak, to tear down the master's house. That is, Dove is using the engines of multi-national advertising and corporate beauty products to undercut the standards promulgated by that very industry. The new cookie-cutter image is exactly how you already look...albeit with a few improvements courtesy of Dove's fine line of moisturizers, conditioners and other natural-beauty-enhancing products. Indeed, to a degree, the advertisements have trapped themselves within their own paradox, as exemplified by the ads for their new firming cream, “as tested on real curves.” The ad is suggesting at once that these women are fine just as they are, but also that they need to be firmed. Their real bodies are still not good enough.

Dove is also adjusting its campaign to target non-western consumers with its feel-good message of embracing one’s unique beauty. At the same time, though, it is trying to break apart the ossified standards of beauty imposed upon women by their cultures, by telling Asian women there's nothing wrong with showing a little skin, and trying to convince North American women that a convex tummy does not immediately make them part of the continent's ever-increasing obesity statistic. The manner in which women need to be liberated is, of course, related to the particular repressive cultural expectations.

There's no denying that Dove has hit a nerve. Many women are ecstatic about the sight of “real” women on billboards and in magazines. The recent anti-aging campaign shows women who have actually aged gracefully, instead of ones who have pumped their faces so full of botox they can't even smile properly. In fact, most critiques of the campaign seem to come from representatives of the same repressive culture that Dove is protesting against – the one that calls these curvy, healthy women “fat.” An article on slate.com – while impressive for its acknowledgement that Dove is advertising their products as a life-style choice, much like environmentally-friendly cosmetics – still concludes that women will tire of the feel-good message and eventually associate Dove with fat girls, and “once you're the brand for fat girls, you're toast.” Robin Ghivan of the Washington Post, meanwhile, openly mocks the campaign's suggestion that the fashion industry creates unattainable standards of beauty, ignoring overwhelming evidence that women all over the world suffer from a terrible body image disproportionate to their actual health. Ghivan pokes fun at Dove’s “real” women, suggesting that Nike's next campaign should feature “a chubby lady with wobbly thighs.” But those who protest that Dove is promoting North America's obesity epidemic are clearly unaware of the huge range of healthy sizes between Gisele Bundchen and the comical fat suits in which “average” women are portrayed in movies such as “Shallow Hal” and “America's Sweethearts.”

Dove is doing a lot to remind women that the faces and bodies they see in magazines are not them, and are not expected to be. Like professional athletes, models do not project a body image that is realistically attainable for most women; but unlike professional athletes, the images of beauty generated by the fashion industry can be unhealthy and dangerous. Nike ads might encourage teenage girls to train for a marathon; Victoria's Secret ads make them stop eating and start wearing padded bras. Hopefully, Dove's campaign represents a halfway point on our culture's journey toward a more accepting standard of beauty, encompassing multiculturalism as well as different body shapes. Maybe one day the voice telling us it's okay to have a big butt won't also be telling us to hurry out and buy something to take care of that unsightly cellulite.

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