
In September of 2004, Dove, a personal care brand targeted more specifically towards women, launched the “Campaign for Real Beauty,” created to evoke discussion on women’s beauty and the various stereotypes that challenge women. Dove wanted to focus on sending out a positive message to the women who deal with negative personal image issues. Society’s media is packed with gorgeous, skinny super models. For example, the Victoria’s Secret models are known for having the perfect, sexy bodies that every girl desires. However, Dove wanted to advertise the true meaning of ‘beauty’ to a female audience in an effort to mitigate personal image issues. With the image of eleven curvy women, all different sizes, shapes, races, and ethnicities, smiling and laughing, Dove is focusing on appealing to “real” women to convey a positive message that beauty comes from confidence, not fear or anxiety.

Visibly, with all the smiling and laughing women in Dove’s campaign, they are promoting the persona of jovial, “real” women who have escaped from the media’s standards and ideals of what it means to be beautiful. Rather than choosing tall, skinny supermodels, such as the famous Victoria’s Secret models, for example, models that are deemed as normal size and curvy were accentuated. Dove wanted to carry out the idea that women need to be comfortable in their own skin, rather than thinking they have to be a size 0, wearing tons of makeup, or wanting to be a certain skin tone to be beautiful. These women also appear to be wearing minimal makeup, aiding in Dove’s dedication to real beauty. The advertisement’s white background strategically highlights the models, pulling more attention to them as they smile through what society calls their “imperfections.” This background also enables the clear depiction of the models’ bodies, features, and colors of their skin. Since Dove is focusing on how everyone is beautiful and unique, this emphasis of the women’s different characteristics attracts multiple groups of female consumers. Dove’s beauty campaign is not only directed towards women who compare themselves to the seemingly flawless and perfect Victoria’s Secret models, and feel depressed about their own body image, but also towards women who face racial challenges dependent on the color of their skin. Essentially, Dove is campaigning that appearance is not all that matters and women should not worry about what they look like, because all women, regardless of their shape, size, or race, are beautiful.

Although Dove’s advertisements fight for their cause to prove to women that beauty exists in all, their syntax and choice of diction could result in problems and provide a sensitive topic for some. In Dove’s advertisement for their campaign for “Real Beauty,” curvier women are pictured in their underwear and titles as “real.” What is missing from this picture, though, are less curvy women. Without forgetting that Dove’s purpose of their campaign was to stray away from the typical too-skinny-to-be-true models, this could become a precarious issue to thinner women. While Dove was using the word “real” to try and cater to the most substantial audience possible, they left out the slimmer, less curvy women. By only acknowledging the curvier women as “real,” Dove is implying that thinner women are unreal and not a good fit for the image of present-day females. This makes it seem as though Dove is only interested in the profit they earn from their product line, and not the actual health that they appear to be showcasing. This advertisement could come off as offensive to thinner women since they are deemed as fake and denied their existence.

Another critique of Dove’s campaign advertisement is that these women in the advertisement are a particular kind of curvy by being all very similar in shape and size. Although none of them appear to be size 0, none of them are considered obese either. This is similar to the idea that since thinner, less curvy women are not present in the advertisement and therefore not considered “real,” women who are larger or overweight are also not considered “real.” Dove is really just campaigning to the women who they want to be seen by society as average, not the skinner or larger women. Maybe Dove is trying to push women to stop thinking that they have to be “supermodel skinny” in order to love themselves. However, in doing so, Dove is also admitting that they do not want women to give up on their health and fitness and be larger in size than “average.” So, similarly to the offense that thinner women could feel from this campaign, women who are larger or obese could also feel the same annoyance that Dove does not see them as demonstrating “real beauty.”

As Dove’s campaign advertisement for “Real Beauty” worked to focus on enriching the thoughts that curvier women had day-to-day and helping with confidence by projecting women of all different shapes, sizes, and races, they also could have done some damage to women who are on the thinner side. Although the campaign claims to praise womanly curves and the variety of body shapes and colors, it makes it a little difficult to believe if this was Dove’s actual goal. This hypocritical approach to gain greater profit seems to be all Dove cares about, which in a business aspect makes sense, but as women, is saddening to think. I still believe that targeting women that are not usually represented in advertisements was smart of Dove, but the fact that their attention was towards correcting society’s ideal natural beauty had some flaws while presenting.
