Dove's Campaign for Real Beauty – As much for men as women

As a woman, I have been personally struck by the overly derogatory opinions of men regarding the merits of the Campaign for Beauty. Comments ranging from “if I wanted to see ordinary women, I would go to a bar” to “this is just the latest brainwashing attempt by marketers” have been echoed repeatedly from the opposite gender.

Initially, I took these comments quite personally because I am one of the 98% of women in this country that does not feel beautiful. How could you feel beautiful when societal expectations are so unattainable and unrealistic? If celebrities and supermodels with their crew of personal chefs, trainers, make-up artists, photographers, and masseuses are the only beautiful people, what’s life like for the average woman?

While the models in the campaign for beauty are touted as ordinary women, they still are quite attractive women regardless of size. So, hearing men’s’ comments about these women not meeting their beauty standards could have sent me in a tailspin of depression and fueled my own insecurity, but instead the dialogue generated by this campaign has given women like me a supportive community of other like-minded women to refute those negative comments and praise this marketing approach.

As a gender, I don’t doubt that women are plagued with insecurity, but they don’t have to be subjugated to men’s insecurities as well. Men are the ones obsessed with physicality and one dimensional beauty – not women. When you ask a women what is attractive to her, only a portion of the descriptors are physical, while the remaining characteristics are emotional. Men on the other hand are focused on hair color, breast size, butts and legs.

For too long women have been wrapped up in men’s insecurities and trying to meet their ideals of perfection. So, when this campaign first came out I found it to be liberating. Finally there was a company willing to take the risk and showcase their products, not with those that will make their products look the best, but with real users. Women are very savvy consumers and aren’t fooled by the promises of beauty products to completely transform them into supermodels. If a company’s spokesperson is clearly someone that has never used the product or doesn’t need the product, how believable can they be?

Naomi Morales, a marketing professor at W.P Carey School of Business at Arizona State, has recently written an article entitled “Our Bodies, Our Behavior: Should Real Ads Have Curves”, where she refutes the positive image building merits of the Campaign for Beauty and questions whether curving models will entice consumers to spend. While she points out that models like the Dove girls may be just what consumers want to see, she doesn’t believe this is a successful marketing approach because “a consumer’s self-esteem doesn’t necessarily rise when she views heavier models.” "I believe there's a reason companies use extremely thin models," Mandel explains. "It's because we have to feel bad about ourselves before we'll want to buy some company's product to solve our problems."

Well that’s an interesting take, but then why would someone continue to use a company’s product? Especially if the product delivers on what it promises, shouldn’t it make you feel better about yourself. Under this philosophy, then would you stop using the product because you no longer feel crappy about yourself?

Thankfully Dove doesn’t agree with Dr. Morales opinion that consumers only buy products when they have low self-esteem! Dove's own research leads them to believe that instead consumers buy when you help to boost one’s self esteem and that this is a much needed evolution in advertising. To probe women's thoughts on beauty and self-esteem, the company hired Harvard University professor Nancy Etcoff, author of "Survival of the Prettiest," and Susie Orbach, a professor from the London School of Economics and author of "Fat is a Feminist Issue." In "The Real Truth About Beauty: A Global Report," the Dove team reports that 68 percent of survey respondents strongly agree that "the media and advertising set an unrealistic standard of beauty that most women can't ever achieve."

Dove certainly took the initiative to address a major issue confronting women today. From a publicity standpoint it seems to be paying off. The question is whether this campaign has increased sales.

The more exposure this advertising gets and the more talking that goes on, the more I have realized that this campaign is as much for men as it is for women. Society needs to celebrate more than one dimension of beauty and to do this, its not good enough for only women to be involved in this change. Men must be included in this transformation as well. Men must be encouraged to appreciate more than just the physical and maybe increased frequency and exposure to images of “real” beauty is the first step in broadening men’s views and societies views on beauty.