In addition to making and selling cosmetics, Dove has specialized in studying the relationships between women and beauty, self-confidence, and self-esteem. At the Cosmetic Europe Congress held on June 13-17, 2016, one of the brand’s representatives, Victoria Sjardin, shared the results of their recent surveys.

The gateway to beauty

The first example the speaker gave of the way women appreciate themselves was provided in the form of a video. It showed sequences shot in São Paulo, Brazil, Mumbai, India, London, UK, San Francisco, USA, and Shanghai, China. In all these cities, two entry pathways to a shopping mall were delimited, and panels were positioned above the doors. On one side, an inscription read ‘Beautiful’, and on the other, ‘Average’. The reactions were the same all around the world: at first, women were taken aback and hesitated, and then they chose to go in through the Average entrance. Inaccessible beauty…

And then, once they had been interviewed about how they had made their choices, a few of them showed more daring. They dared go in through the Beautiful door. You should see the bright smiles on their faces: it made them… even more beautiful!

Click on this link to watch the video , and ask yourself, honestly: which door would you have chosen? Which one would you choose now?

Beauty and implications

Victoria Sjardin went on with the results of a survey conducted in 30 countries among young girls and women aged 10 to 64. The results are particularly instructive: very few women are confident in their own beauty.
If they are 64% in South Africa (the exception which proves the rule!), they are only 45% in Russia, 42% in Turkey, 40% in India, 37% in China, 36% in Mexico, 34% in Germany, 27% in Brazil, 24% in the United States, 22% in Canada, 20% in Australia and in the UK, 8% in Japan…

The speaker emphasized the importance of these results, because they also show how young girls and women view their relationships with others and society, and because they have an impact on how they commit to them.

For example, on the days they have a poor opinion of their physical appearance:
• 9 women out of 10, and 8 young girls out of 10 avoid certain activities, like meeting friends, joining a club or a sports team… or simply going out
• 5 women out of 10, and 7 young girls out of 10 are not self-confident and are not sure of their opinions, which can make them decide not to go to a job interview or to work, or ask for help when they need it
• 9 women out of 10, and 7 young girls out of 10 go on a diet, and sometimes neglect their own health, so much that they do not go see a doctor when they would actually need it…

Unique beauty, multiple relays

And neither brands’ ads, nor the press, nor social networks, which are perceived by 64% of women as representing a pressure to have a certain appearance, can counterbalance these feelings.
As a result, all around the world, women put pressure on themselves to get the perfect look, the unique image they think they should reflect.
And it is them that cultivate the perception that this beauty is inaccessible: on the Twitter network, for example, four negative messages out of five related to beauty are posted by women who talk about themselves!

In order to highlight this perverse diktat of stereotyped beauty standards, Dove shot another video that targets Indian women, but which can actually echo what can be observed all around the world. Less than a minute, starting with the following statement: ‘It is strange that in a country that counts 631 million women, beauty only bears one face…’ Then, there are shots of a multitude of women’s faces, all different… but all beautiful. ( Click on this link to watch the video ) The video ends with a message: ‘Let’s break the rules of beauty’… which seems to correspond to one of women’s expectations, as they claim they support more diversified beauty standards.

Like mother, like daughter

Breaking the rules of beauty is obviously more easily said than done… but if anyone needed any additional motive to at least try it, it could be found in a last Dove video. For this different experience, a few women were asked to write about their perception of their own body… Then, the same question was asked to their daughters.

The result? Young girls think they have exactly the same flaws as their mothers, and the negative image they have of their own body and beauty seems to be the exact copy of that of their mothers. The conclusion is that their self-confidence and confidence in their beauty – and, consequently, all the positive sensations that might result from and have an impact on the way they act in their everyday lives – have something to do with you, first. ( Click on this link to watch the video )
Or how to free tomorrow’s generation of women from the fetters that still confine today’s.

The good news Victoria Sjardin eventually gave is that there is a quite simple way to go down that road, because the studies conducted by Dove have also shown that skincare routines, whether they are done at home or in a beauty salon, play a significant role in improving women’s opinion of beauty.
And this confirms both the importance of cosmetics in women’s self-esteem and the role brands can play in this field.