I am beautiful

I remember showing my daughter, then aged about 14, a clip on YouTube that revealed the way that models are transformed in our media both with make-up and, more recently, by adjusting the image with software such as Photoshop. It was part of the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty.

Dove is a brand of soap, haircare and other “beauty” products owned by the global company Unilever, which, among other things, sells cleaning and personal care products of various kinds.

Dove undertook research in 2004 that showed only 2 per cent of women would describe themselves as beautiful. Isn’t that gobsmacking? Two per cent!

The YouTube clip was really effective. My daughter was astonished to see went on to create the beauty stereotypes and, although she remained an avid reader of magazines, she took the images with a grain of salt. Nevertheless, girls of that age often spend a lot of time looking through and commenting on how the women look – too fat, too thin! Great, two weeks after the baby. Silly in that dress, those shoes.

Last year, Dove updated its study, and while there is some gratifying news – the number of women who consider themselves beautiful has doubled from 2 per cent to 4 per cent – the other findings are horrific.

“The study revealed that only 4 per cent of women around the world consider themselves beautiful, and that anxiety about looks begins at an early age. In a study of over 1200 10-to-17-year-olds, a majority of girls, 72 per cent, said they felt tremendous pressure to be beautiful. The study also found that only 11 per cent of girls around the world feel comfortable using the word beautiful to describe their looks, showing that there is a universal increase in beauty pressure and a decrease in girls’ confidence as they grow older.”

In addition:

• 80 per cent of women agree that every woman has something about her that is beautiful but do not see their own beauty.

• More than half (54 per cent) of women globally agree that when it comes to how they look, they are their own worst beauty critic. Source: The Real Truth About Beauty: Revisited.

How many of us can put our hands up and say we consider ourselves beautiful, including the feminists. Hair! Oh my god, a dollar for every woman with curly hair who wants it straight, and every one with straight who wants it curly. The bags under our eyes (from working so hard), the wrinkles from laughing or crying, and from worrying about our wrinkles, the lumps and bumps in our skin. We look in the mirror and we see, as we are taught to see, myriad flaws.

And there is also the fear of claiming beauty. Even privately, in a survey, we cannot say, “I am beautiful”. We are afraid because we do not want to be laughed at, criticised, compared with peers or friends, even if we say it in our own heads.

The Dove campaign is a great example of a company taking on a meaningful issue that is important to its customer base. Dove’s goal is not to attack the idea of beauty, but to “widen the definition” of beauty. Its approach has been to actually get in front of girls, to educate, inspire and motivate them. It claims to have reached 7 million girls so far, using a criteria of having spent no less than one hour with them educating them, and the YouTube clip has had more than 14 million hits.

It’s goal is to keep working with girls, and to reach 15 million girls by 2015.

It’s a campaign that I love.

Do you agree? Write and tell me your views.

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