When it comes to the topic of women and self-esteem, no brand has explored this subject with more innovation, creativity and passion than Dove. With its 11-year-old “Campaign for Real Beauty,” the brand has developed a reputation for creating campaigns that truly resonate. The personal-care company has tackled such questions as:
- Do current definitions of beauty reflect real women?
- Do women see themselves the way others see them?
- How do we change the negative perceptions around aging?
- Can a selfie define one’s sense of beauty?
So this week, as the co-founder of NaturallyCurly.com, I was thrilled when Dove debuted its "Love Your Curls" campaign to launch its new product line, Quench Absolute. Dove ‘s short film was crafted with an emphasis on encouraging all women to embrace their individual curl type and texture, regardless of race or ethnicity.
In the video, a handful of young women (ages 5 to 11) are asked how they feel about their curly hair. The poignant responses are enough to generate tears. The girls discuss what they dislike about their curls and kinks and why they’d prefer straight hair. "Sometimes I wish I could just rip it out,” said one tween.
The campaign’s message could have been pulled directly from NaturallyCurly’s discussion board “CurlTalk,” where millions of women have shared their insecurities with one another over the past 16 years. I’ve read endless posts from young girls who have shared their pain over being teased each day by classmates about their curly or coily hair. It’s an experience I can relate to all too well having been called “Bozo” by the boys in my 7th-grade Social Studies class. I dreaded going to school each morning.
Recently, there was 8-year-old daughter Deborah-Ann who came home crying everyday because of the teasing she endured. Her classmates told her she had "horse hair." Her mom took to the Internet, and found the NaturallyCurly Facebook page She showed her daughter examples of women with gorgeous natural hairstyles Deborah-Ann asked her mom to post a picture of her on the Facebook page. Crawford posted the picture, along with the story about the teasing she got about her hair.That picture got nearly 33,000 likes, 1,400 shares and 4,800 comments – the most ever for a NaturallyCurly Facebook post. People posted words of support, photos of their own daughters and positive comments about Deborah-Ann’s hair.
It’s great to see a brand like Dove – which has such an enormous, powerful global mouthpiece – take on this topic, one that we here at NaturallyCurly have addressed and discussed every single day for more than 16 years through content creation and exploration. Although there have been many strides made in our textured world, there is still so far to go. We can use all the help we can get!
As a former business reporter, I wanted to look into the history of Dove’s focus on self-esteem issues. It all started in 20014 with Dove’s global study, The Real Truth About Beauty: A Global Report. The study found that the definition of beauty had become limiting and unattainable. Among the study’s findings was the statistic that only 2% of women around the world would describe themselves as beautiful. In response to these findings, Dove® launched the Campaign for Real Beauty. Here's a brief summary of Dove's ongoing initiative:
2004: The Campaign for Real Beauty launched in September with a much talked-about ad campaign featuring real women whose appearances are outside the stereotypical norms of beauty. The ads asked viewers to judge the women’s looks (oversized or outstanding? and wrinkled or wonderful?), and invited them to cast their votes at campaignforrealbeauty.com.
2005: Dove® kicked off an ad campaign featuring six real women with real bodies and real curves. The phase of the campaign was created to debunk the stereotype that only thin is beautiful.
2006: Dove® produced a compelling short film, Evolution, depicting the transformation of a real woman into a model and promoting awareness of how unrealistic perceptions of beauty are created. Dove® established the Dove® Self-Esteem Fund. The Dove® Self-Esteem Fund was created to act as an agent of change to inspire and educate girls and women about a wider definition of beauty. This same year, the brand released a commercial called Little Girls during the Super Bowl, reaching an estimated 89 million viewers.
2007: Dove® launched the third phase of the Campaign for Real Beauty with its global study, Beauty Comes of Age, revealed that 91% of women ages 50–64 believe it is time for society to change its views about women and aging. The campaign celebrated the essence of women 50+—wrinkles, age spots, grey hair and all. It was brought to life through a communications campaign created with internationally renowned photographer Annie Leibovitz.
2004: The Campaign for Real Beauty launched in September with a much talked-about ad campaign featuring real women whose appearances are outside the stereotypical norms of beauty. The ads asked viewers to judge the women’s looks (oversized or outstanding? and wrinkled or wonderful?), and invited them to cast their votes at campaignforrealbeauty.com.of the campaign was created to debunk the stereotype that only thin is beautiful.
2006: Dove® produced a compelling short film, Evolution, depicting the transformation of a real woman into a model and promoting awareness of how unrealistic perceptions of beauty are created. Dove® established the Dove® Self-Esteem Fund. The Dove® Self-Esteem Fund was created to act as an agent of change to inspire and educate girls and women about a wider definition of beauty. This same year, the brand released a commercial called Little Girls during the Super Bowl, reaching an estimated 89 million viewers.
2007: Dove® launched the third phase of the Campaign for Real Beauty with its global study, Beauty Comes of Age, revealed that 91% of women ages 50–64 believe it is time for society to change its views about women and aging. The campaign celebrated the essence of women 50+—wrinkles, age spots, grey hair and all. It was brought to life through a communications campaign created with internationally renowned photographer Annie Leibovitz.
When the Campaign for Real Beauty focused on the idea that girls are bombarded with unrealistic, unattainable images and images of beauty that impact their self-esteem, the brand teamed up with the entertainment industry to show that what girls see in movies and magazines represents an unrealistic standard of beauty. Onslaught, an online film dramatizing the barrage of beauty images girls face, dramatized this point.
2011: Dove® released the findings of its largest global study to date on women’s relationship with beauty—The Real Truth About Beauty: Revisited. The study revealed that only 4% of women around the world consider themselves beautiful, and that anxiety about looks begins at an early age. In a study of over 1,200 10-to-17-year-olds, a majority of girls, 72%, said they felt tremendous pressure to be beautiful. The study also found that only 11% of girls around the world feel comfortable using the word beautiful to describe their looks, showing that there is a universal increase in beauty pressure and a decrease in girls' confidence as they grow older. Though Dove® efforts have moved the needle in a positive direction, there is more to be done.
2013: Dove's "Real Beauty Sketches" used an FBI-trained sketch artist to draw women first based on their own self-perception and then based on that of a stranger. The stranger's descriptions were regularly more stereotypically attractive and similar to what the subjects actually looked like — hammering in Dove's point that women are often overly critical of their appearances and don't see their true beauty.
2014: Dove debuted “Selfie,” a 7-minute film at the Sundance Film Festival.Selfie” follows a group of teenage girls from Massachusetts and their mothers who were asked to take selfies of the features of themselves they disliked the most. The mother-daughter duos then attend an event where their self-portraits are blown up and posted in a “#BeautyIs selfie photo gallery.”
So bravo to Dove for tackling the topic closest to my heart: Curly Hair. Better late than never!
