Dove, a soap and personal care products manufacturer, launched a campaign last week on its YouTube page called, “#ChooseBeautiful.” The social experiment involved setting up two doors at random stores, labeled “beautiful” and “average” in cities such as San Francisco, Shanghai, Delhi, London and Sao Paulo. Women who approached these stores had the option of walking through either door, depending on how they perceived themselves.
According to its YouTube page, Dove launched the experiment to “prove that beauty is a choice and the power of this choice is in your hands.” After watching the video, it wasn’t surprising that many of the women in the video chose to walk through the “average” door.
Although slightly empowering for those who chose “beautiful,” the social experiment failed those who decided they were “average” by emphasizing their insecurities. People are self-conscious as it is, so why make them even more uncomfortable by making them publicly choose to walk through a door that shows how they see themselves. This choice is one they will probably not forget long after walking through those doors.
Our perception of beauty has become a blur, especially in this generation, which idolizes celebrities like the Kardashians, who have surgically altered their appearance. So unless you have a large behind and a small waist, really pouty lips and chiseled cheekbones, then you are considered, for a lack of a better word, average.
Choosing to walk through the “average” door will serve as a reminder to these women that they weren’t good enough. Although Dove representatives interviewed some of the women afterwards, the representatives didn’t appear to offer any word of encouragement when women decided which door to walk through, making the test pointless.
For instance, one of the Indian women in the video walks through the “average” door and says she didn’t really feel good about herself afterwards, while another one says, “It was my choice and now I will question myself for the next few weeks, maybe months.”
Unilever, the company which owns Dove, released an official statement on its website that “Dove believes feeling beautiful is a personal choice women should feel empowered to make for themselves, every day.” But if the skin care company wanted to empower women and make them feel good about themselves, why did they only give these women the opportunity of choosing either of the two physical traits? Why not qualities that asked how they see their inner beauty?
It’s not really giving women much of a choice of how they should perceive themselves when they are only given two options. Maybe some of the women in the video had certain concerns or insecurities with their looks and this experience critiqued their looks in an offensive manner. Or rather, the ones who wanted to walk through the “beautiful” door were hesitant because they didn’t want to seem vain.
The campaign was just two boards labeled “beautiful” and “average” — a marketing tool to get women to buy Dove products and feel beautiful even if they think they’re not.
