It’s difficult being a first world woman. I don’t worry about where my next meal will come from, but I am concerned about it’s probable effect on my waistline. I don’t worry about dying at 60, but I dread what I may look like when I get there. We pick ourselves apart from the inside out, with an insatiable insecurity that marketing companies force feel like a foie gras goose. The boys of That Mitchell and Webb Look summed it up nicely.
So I appreciate any counter balance to our culture’s constant, insidious criticism. Remember when Jamie Lee Curtis did that photo shoot for More magazine? Seeing her with no make-up, no airbrushing and looking like an average woman was refreshing. It made me feel better about myself for about three minutes.

Dove®, purveyor of hygiene and beauty necessities, has been trying to lift its head out of the advertising swill of by appealing to women’s self-esteem; not by crushing it, but by bolstering it. Their Campaign for Real Beauty is aimed at the same market of dissatisfied women, but tries to curry favor with compliments rather than implied disappointment. Unfortunately, I am far too cynical to believe this manoeuvre isn’t a bit disingenuous; like every other advertiser, Dove is still using kind lighting and probably a little photoshopping. What we end up with are Illusions of empowerment that manipulate even as they encourage.
Regardless, having been slowly crushed by advertising since I was a child (remember those Breck girls?), Dove’s approach does make me feel better. So when I read about Dove’s most recent attempt to rescue the alienated consumer, I was intrigued.
If you’re one of the people who struggles to believe them, the latest addition to the series just might convince you that you may need to rethink your approach.
Dove hired an FBI-trained police sketch artist to draw women – first, based on the women’s descriptions of themselves, then based on how others described them.
In nearly every instance, the pictures were starkly different – the women describing themselves had been [notably] harsh and the resulting image often not appealing. When another person described the very same face, however, the differences were positively dramatic.
Impressive, right? Not really. First of all, the women seem to have been hand-picked from a Build Your Self-esteem workshop. This could just as easily have been an ad for antidepressants.
Then there’s the “objective” opinions of strangers. No decent person is going to chat with a newly introduced, amiable person and then, immediately afterwards on camera, describe that person’s appearance in anything but a kind light. I can only imagine that the entire process of choosing subjects and observers was carried out much like a jury selection.
Dove’s tactics, while still somewhat Machiavellian, are at least not so subtly disparaging as their competitors and that’s a good thing. When it comes to a woman’s self-image, even lip-service is comforting.
My real problem with the whole thing is the terrible police sketches. It’s no wonder rapists and murderers so often elude capture.