How do you see yourself?

This past Monday with all the terrible news, I happened to see a video from Dove. The tag line was you are more beautiful than you think. It was very moving looking at the faces of the women. They saw themselves how others perceived them. It got me thinking, do I look different to my family, peers and strangers?

However as the week progressed I saw an article by a blogger that criticized the commercial on her blog titled, “Why Dove’s Real Beauty Sketches Video Makes Me Uncomfortable and… Kinda makes me angry”

She brought up some points that had me shaking my head. WHAT? REALLY?

One of the topics raised was that Dove does not show diversity in their sketches. Well here is a newsflash. We live in North America where the population has a Caucasian majority. So when it comes to branding they are going to market to the majority. Also you may notice that makeup that is found in drug stores do not cater to all diversities. They cater to the majority which are light skinned. This is not meant to ignore the other races. That is just a fact.

One of the key aspects of the video was to show that after interaction with a stranger, the stranger was asked to describe them. The stranger’s description could have been totally different if (a) they only saw a picture of the person (b) they had unpleasant interaction, or (c) tends to use negative descriptors in everyday speech.

If you are interacting with someone in a positive light, they will appear more attractive to you. You will use words from your own ideas of beauty to describe them.  I understand that physical appearance is not everything and we should look at inner beauty and not focus on the outer as much. However the participants are describing someone to a sketch artist. They are not writing a biography where other descriptors are needed.

Should Dove empower women to be more than just beautiful? Why should they?  They sell soap, and shampoo. It is up to you to do that. You need to put your own descriptors for yourself. You can be strong, passionate and smart or whatever you choose to be. The point of the marketing strategy was to engage and emotional response from the audience.  In this case it was to show that you can be perceived differently to a stranger.

The blogger also criticized Dove for being hypocrites in her post script. She said that Dove is made by Unilever. This company also makes Axe which is known for their blatantly sexist ads. In my opinion, I think this blogger wanted to pick apart this commercial because it is owned by the same company as Axe.  By the way Unilever also makes brands such as Q-Tips.

I hope that what we can get out of this video is to see ourselves in a positive light every day. There are so many people including ourselves that think the worse of us. Think of this, how will a stranger see you today?