For those of you who have not seen the following Dove campaign ad, please take a moment to watch it before reading any further on this post!
I saw this video at the start of this week and I have seemed to be thinking about it ever since then. The campaign holds such honesty and truth behind the process and the participants that were used. The main point of this campaign is to create an awareness for not only women, but for men as well; about the importance of our natural beauty, the idea that society has the ability to change us and tear us down about our appearances. Dove did a great job with this campaign in stressing the importance of ignoring what society engrains into our minds, to hate our natural beauty.
The topic of natural beauty is something that majority of woman everyday spend hours trying to cover up. Whether it is being overweight, having a big nose, having a large forehead, or hating your crooked teeth, women today find a way to pick their appearances apart no matter how beautiful they are. Although us women like to play shy when receiving a compliment, it is moments like the ones in this video that show the true reactions.
Being the big baby that I can be, I began to tear up when watching the women’s reactions to finding out how others viewed them. The powerful moment of seeing these women FINALLY understand their true beauty, was amazing. I think that with society having such a huge role in our feelings towards our appearances, it is hard to see past all the vainness that we are surrounded by.
In the video, one of the participating women stated, “We spend a lot of time as women, analyzing and trying to fix the things that aren’t quite right, and we should spend more time appreciating the things that we do like.” I think that this quote summarized the purpose of the entire video for me. These ideas of plastic surgery, extreme diets, and dying our hair, are all things that we as women do to look “beautiful”. But tell me, what is beauty? I think the first place to start, to fix this issue, is by defining what beauty truly is. Once we can decide on what WE personally think is beautiful in a woman, not based on the tabloids and magazines, we will be on the path to changing this harsh and critical world we have been struggling in?
I think that this campaign begins by emphasizing on changing our view of our personal, natural beauty, but ends with emphasizing on the importance of what is within. The quote, “A beautiful woman should break her mirror early”, shows us that our viewing of our appearance comes from within, not from others or our surroundings.
As women of today’s critical society, it is moments like this that we must digest and share. This Dove campaign is something that needs to be shared with women and men. I’ll admit, it is nice to hear from a partner, friend, or who ever, that you are beautiful, but that is not the only time we are hearing this. We should be able to feel confident and tell ourselves that we are beautiful, we should be able to love our bodies, hair type, and bone structure, no matter how “different” they may look.
The main narrator of this video (when talking about natural beauty) states, “It impacts everything, it could not be more critical to your happiness.” So you tell me ladies and gentlemen, are you going to leave your happiness up to what society thinks, or are you going to change your views of beauty and make your own happiness?
ShoutOut! James Madison University 
Reblogged this on The healthiest beauty.
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I really love how you focus on opening up our notion of beauty to be more inclusive of other aspects of self beyond the physical body. One critique of the campaign is that there is still a very heavy focus on a narrow vision of beauty that is to be sought after. I was thinking that it would be fun to get with a group of friends and do a similar exercise but with written descriptions of self that include a holistic vision of self vs. external physical appearance. I think that women (and probably) me are self-critical about much more than how they look and it would be just as powerful to learn how others see the whole you.
Thanks for sharing!
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Great post!! I definitely had mixed feelings with this video…I know overall the message is awesome and it was moving but there was a little part of me that was disappointed. They have the financial ability to really make a statement and yet they are still reinforcing certain aspects of beauty that are so prevalent in the media, thin equals beautiful, youth is desirable and signs of aging or being fat are bad or “ugly.” All the women were relatively thin, most of which were white and blonde, even the women representing minorities were lighter skinned which also just reinforces stereotypes or images of racial beauty. I definitely think the impact is there and the point is amazing because as women we are our harshest critics but there was a little part of me that really wanted them to take this influential video to the max, but alas they didn’t quite take it there. Also fun fact that I learned in my senior seminar class, that the company that owns Dove actually owns Axe which I’m sure you’ve seen their extremely sexists advertisements but yea that kind of lessens my love of Dove. But great post! This video is going viral and is definitely a step in the right direction!
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This was very insightful – not only because we are all more beautiful than we think, but because way too much of how we feel about ourselves comes from without, instead of within. How we look is mostly genetic, and we have no control over that! How we feel about ourselves is a whole different story.
It’s more important to be a beautiful person. Good article!
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