Beauty

In one of final assignments that I did last semester, I presented an analysis of Dove's marketing communication. During my research I found several interesting things.

In 2004, a collaborative research done by Harvard University and London School of Economics and  funded by Dove revealed some facts about how women throughout the world perceived the concept of beauty. Shortly short, according to the authors, many women didn't describe themseleves as beautiful and agreed that media had set unrealistic standard of beauty. Though many opposed the results (which is a common thing for every controversial research), Dove still proceed their next marketing strategy based on those. (In my opinion, since Dove did fund the research we couldn't really tell for sure whether the research was indeed driven to certain direction or not).

Dove then launched a global campaign, which you might have already known, titled Real Beauty. The campaign basically encourage people, especially women, to embrace their own beauty despite of the standard that established by the media. in their ads, they use rather "common people" instead of models. By "common people" means people with any shapes, races, and ages. The campaign got much attention and has been research object multiple times for its uniqueness.

Shortly short (again), my analysis concern more about how the global campaign implemented in Indonesia. Not gonna go in details to that . ;)

One of the most interesting things about this campaign is a short movie called "Dove Evolution" (2006). It was released as part of their campaign to promote self-confidence. Based on several articles, "Dove Evolution" was quite famous at the time it was launched. See for yourself.




While doing the analysis, I remember a good friend mine who is, in my opinion, having a self-confidence issue about her physical appearance, To be perfectly honest, there's nothing wrong with her look.Surely, she doesn't look like those beautiful faces we see on TV but who does?
Not only that she's beautiful, but she's also one of the nicest people I've ever known. She holds a degree from one of the most reputable universities in this country (and believe me, the degree also comes from the most prestigious faculty in that unversity). I never really understand why she often doubts herself while I wish to be more like her.

Going back to Dove Evolution movie, I wonder if it really portrays our standard of beauty? Are women mostly defined by how they look instead of what degree they hold or their attitudes? You can say "no" but I know some people do judge women mostly from their looks.

So, in my attempt to be somewhat wise, I quoted Dr. Seuss to my friend: "those who mind dont matter. Those who matter don't mind".
Say you have droopy eyes, big nose, thin hair, or soft-and-lack-of-characters bone structure like mine, you might meet some people who mind your shortcomings. Those people don't matter or important for you. Because those people who really matter for you are those who don't mind with those because they see beyond your outer qualities. Having said that, I think it's better to stay confidence about ourselves, which I acknowledge as something that is not easy.

As part of their Real Beauty campaign, Dove also encourage women to be confident. They argue that those features you have that don't match the common standard are not ugly, they are just different and there's no reason to feel bad about them only because they are not portrayed as ideal by the media.

I must agree with this point. I often meet women with curly hairs, dark skin, small eyes, or huge body whom I secretly envy because they look very attractive. True story (or 'stories', in this case). One thing these women never fail to have is confidence (without "over" before the word). At the end, I genuinely believe that most people look attractive because they believe they do look good. The rest (and minority group of people) are granted such extraordinary beauty that they don't need confindence factor to be attractive.