Are women their own worst beauty critics? Dove’s poignant new campaign proves they are.
The brand’s experiment, which shows how women view their own beauty in contrast to what others see, went viral since its release on April 14 2013 -- 20,787,660 views (at the time of publishing) in less than two weeks.
Gil Zamora, an FBI-trained forensic artist who has drawn over 3,000 sketches during his 28-year career, was asked to create composite sketches of seven “real” women -- not models or actors -- based on their descriptions of themselves. The women were separated from him by a curtain during the process.
“I just ask them non-leading questions and I come up with the features based on their memory,” he explains in another video that’s part of the same campaign.
Before the session with Zamora, the women were asked to spend time with a stranger, without being told why. The strangers then sat down with Zamora and gave him their descriptions of the women they met earlier.
The final reveal, with both sketches placed next to each other, was an eye-opening experience for most of the women. You can browse through videos of them talking about their emotional epiphanies on the Real Beauty Sketches campaign page on the Dove website.
Critics of the campaign feel the films are too heavily edited, too melodramatic and that many of the positive descriptions -- “very nice blue eyes” and “a nice thin chin” -- are skewed towards Caucasians. Still, Dove’s overriding message -- “You are more beautiful than you think” -- is a powerful, necessary one and delivered effectively.
Meanwhile, on another planet, men are their own biggest fans says Cladwell, a men's online shopping service, in a parody copy of the Dove film which the company released on YouTube two days after Dove took off. It's completely self-explanatory. Enjoy.
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