Tears of a Dove

I finally did it. I watched Dove's "Real Beauty Sketches" video.

I'd put it off for quite some time, despite (or because of) the fact that so many of my friends were calling it life-changing. They all assured me that it moved them to tears. I didn't want to be moved to tears by a commercial-- and I had no doubt that it was a commercial. A seller of women's beauty products doesn't make videos about beauty for any other purpose. However, as the endorsements kept pouring in, I began to wonder. Had Dove really done something so revolutionary? Did they really have something profound to say about female beauty? I decided to see for myself.

And I was not moved to tears. I was impressed-- aesthetically, the video is excellent right down to the soft lighting and music. It was interesting to watch the experiment unfold, and I found myself feeling genuine empathy for the pretty women who thought they were ugly ducklings. I was happy for them when they saw their sketches side by side, and admitted they were prettier than they thought. Along with countless other Americans, I shared the video on my Facebook wall.

And then I sat down to think about how to make it better. I realized as I did, that the video was just what I'd expected-- a commercial, and an attempt to reinforce a dangerous lie that society has been telling women for time immemorial. There were so many ways that Dove could have made the video into a real statement on beauty, but they failed. I'll only mention in passing the way in which the experiment itself was flawed: they did nothing to control for the fact that many women will downplay their looks in an attempt to be modest, and that kind strangers will flatter in an attempt to be generous. But for the sake of argument, I'll overlook that. Less excusably, the subjects of the experiment are all slim, pretty, well-dressed young women of a similar socioeconomic bracket. A cursory attempt at diversity was made by including not one but two token black women. And that was all. That was meant to be a representation of real women throughout the world, or at least throughout Dove's target market. And then there was the big reveal, when the women realized that they must be beautiful because a stranger said so.

The missed opportunities were so manifold it's difficult to know where to begin. What if the Dove corporation repeated the experiment, this time with actual diversity? What if, in addition to the original subjects, they'd added others? What about a fat woman? How about two fat women-- one medically obese and one just too fat for television? What about a woman who'd battled anorexia for years and had finally gotten back up over a hundred pounds? What about a woman over the age of 40? Or a woman with facial features that Westerners traditionally find unappealing, such as the broad noses that Native Australians and some people from Africa have. Or a woman who'd recently gone bald from chemo, or had lost an eye to cancer, or who had surgical scars. Or a woman in a wheelchair, or with facial tremors, vitiligo,or a cochlear implant. What if they'd included a woman who'd come in just after work, still in her scrubs or her military uniform? A goth, a Muslim in a Hijab, or someone with dreadlocks and piercings? In other words, what if they'd faithfully and realistically represented the faces of women in this country and the world? I'd like to see beautiful women of all kinds, because all kinds of women are beautiful.

Now, let's expand the running time of the video, because I want to see what those women were doing before they came into the studio. I'd like to see them at working expertly at their jobs, or studying at school. I'd like to see them caring for their families, serving the poor, praying, writing, painting, singing and laughing. I'd like to see them bravely battling illness or publicly protesting injustice. In other words, I'd like to see the beautiful things that women do. That's where beauty manifests itself-- not in faces, but in people. People are alive, and the good things they do are beautiful.

Finally, and most importantly: after their portraits are revealed, have the women say something along the lines of "That's great to know and very flattering... but in another way, it's pointless, because my value as a woman goes so much deeper than what a stranger I'll never see again thinks of my looks." That would be true beauty, because that's the truth. Women-- all women-- are beautiful. Women are beautiful because women are human beings, and human beings are beautiful. It shouldn't matter what a stranger says about a woman's beauty. That means nothing at all. But the majority of women have been raised to believe that it means everything-- that our beauty, and even our value as persons, is determined by a stranger's opinion. And we believe it. I know it's a lie, and yet on so many levels I still believe it. A stranger pats my stretched, surgical-scarred belly and asks if I'm pregnant, and I burn inside as if she's hit me. An angry driver in a passing car calls me an ugly bitch, and my day is ruined. I believe that their words have value, because that's what I've been conditioned to believe. This belief is so deeply ingrained I can't imagine ever losing it entirely.

And that's the reason why I'm offended by the Dove video. The experiment is flawed. It's silly of them to make no attempt at real diversity, or at exploring all the ways in which women are beautiful. But worst of all, they are reinforcing a dangerous belief; a belief that tortures women around the world every day. They want us to base our self-esteem on a stranger's opinion of our looks. And this has nothing to do with beauty. It does, however, move me to tears.