What is Real Beauty?

A recent advertisement for the Dove brand of personal care products is sending mixed messages. The ad, centering around a three-minute video, documents an FBI-trained sketch artist making portraits of several different women he cannot see. He draws each subject -- none of whom, apparently, are models -- twice. One portrait is based on that woman’s description of herself, and the other is based on another person’s description of that same woman.

The result is striking. Drawings based on each woman’s description of herself always look worse than ones based on another person’s description. The ad highlights the way that women tend to see themselves, and then describe themselves, in terms of their physical flaws and what they don’t like about themselves. In this way, the video offers an empowering message to women, explicitly stated onscreen at the ad’s close: “You are more beautiful than you think.”

Despite this explicit encouragement, the ad has been criticized by some eating disorder professionals and other online commenters. They point out that though the women in the ad -- like other women in Dove’s Real Beauty campaign -- don’t appear to be fashion models, they are, objectively speaking, thin and attractive nonetheless. Absent from the ad are women with a face or body not considered typically attractive; perhaps the relatively unflattering portraits inspired by their self-descriptions would simply be an undistorted reflection of their appearance. What is being communicated to these women? Critics make a strong case that this ad promoting “real beauty” is simply another message that it’s fine to be happy with your body as long as it falls within a particular narrow range of acceptable weight or shape. The ad also accepts as a given that being looked at is intrinsic to a woman’s existence. Of course, though, an ad focused on what women’s bodies can do, rather than how they look, probably wouldn’t sell much soap.