DOVE – REAL BEAUTY

Since 1957, ‘Dove Beauty’ has celebrated and cared about women. Dove has made it a huge part of their mission as a company to combat the unrealistic representation of beauty in the media and promote their products through real women.

Show us Campaign…

Dove has done many campaigns along it’s journey, to fight for the accurate representation of women in the media. Looking at the ‘Show us Campaign’ specifically, it was recorded in 2019 that 70% of women still did not feel represented in the media or in advertising.(Dove.com. 2020) Dove set up this campaign called ‘Show us’ alongside Getty images and Girl gaze, with the aim of the campaign to build the largest photo library of images that helps to shatter the beauty stereotypes in the media and advertising.

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Since the start of this worldwide campaign and the release of the advert that goes with it, there is now a bank of over 10,000 photographs taken by photographers all over the world. These photographs are available for use by all media and advertising companies to encourage the use of realistic women and beauty in the media and marketing industry.

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Doves “Real Beauty” Pledge…

• Portraying women as they are in real life
• No filter
• Not unachievable
• No retouching
• Portrays diversity
• Honesty
• Respect
• Identifies the women by name
• Improve body confidence
• Improve self-esteem

Over the last 10 years, Dove has managed to educate 20 million women on issues such as self-esteem and body confidence and is encouraging the next generation of children to grow up with a positive relationship with their bodies and the perception of beauty.

After watching and reading about this campaign I felt inspired to do the same, to take photos of my mum in her natural unedited form. I then asked her a few questions about herself as after watching many dove beauty campaigns during my research, a resounding message was the reluctance in women to admit/ find themselves beautiful, due to the unrealistic portrayal of women in the media all around them.

Over to me…

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Here are the unedited raw photographs that I took, I asked her what her least favourite feature was, to that she responded growing old also that when she was younger she was afraid people viewed her as manly as she was an athlete. When I asked her what her favourite feature was, she was slower to answer, she admitted that she didn’t often look in the mirror and think like that, mostly due to being busy but also not having that self confidence.

The fight for women to feel confident, beautiful and free is far from over but Dove is committed to continuing to question the beauty industry and represent real women and real beauty, not the photoshopped, staged and retouched beauty we are being shown in advertising.

References…

Dove.com. 2020. [online] Available at: <https://www.dove.com/uk/stories/about-dove/dove-real-beauty-pledge.html&gt; [Accessed 21 April 2020].

Victoria Probert. 2020. Dove — Victoria Probert. [online] Available at: <https://www.victoriaprobert.com/dove&gt; [Accessed 21 April 2020].