Why Dove's #ChooseBeautiful campaign is ugly

Following a long tradition of telling women that they can look beautiful, Dove has come out with a new campaign #ChooseBeautiful that has, guess what, gone viral.

Backed by their own survey, the brand tells us, after interviewing some 64,000 women, that 96 per cent of them think they are "average looking" and not "beautiful". In the video, Dove sets up two doors, one next to the other, around the world, including in New Delhi, labelled "average" and "beautiful". Unsurprisingly, or rather surprisingly, most women when confronted with the choice of walking through one of them, choose the "average" entrance.

The reactions that follow are Dove classic. Racked with guilt on choosing to be anything less than the superlative, an Indian woman is shown, saying, "It was my choice and now I will question myself for the next few weeks or months." In the next scene, we see two women talking to each other:

"I went through the average door."

"Really?"

"Yeah."

"Oh my gosh."

"Yeah. I didn't even hesitate."

The point being driven is that there must be a necessary hesitation in choosing to be average.

"Women make thousands of choices each day - related to their careers, their families, and, let's not forget, themselves," the voiceover tell us. "Feeling beautiful is one of those choices that women should feel empowered to make for themselves, every day."

The way I see it, the most interesting reactions come from those who make faces and turn away. After being repeatedly told by Dove what we must be feeling about ourselves, must we not finally ask ourselves why?

By choosing to run campaigns that are meant to empower us, and then show we're guilty of those choices, what is the toiletry brand that sells whitening anti-perspirant deodorant and beauty creams trying to achieve? Also, is it really allowing us a choice?

If you are looking for clues, take a look at Dove's parent company Unilever, whose own website rather honestly notes: "Part of the success of our Dove Self-Esteem Project has been an increased willingness among consumers to spread the brand's positive message and to purchase Dove's products." They go on to tell us that in the US, 62 per cent of women aware of the project would recommend their product to others, in Canada 82 per cent.

So what is #ChooseBeautiful? A campaign that pretends to break the myth of the "ideal self" by encouraging us to buy products that allow us to achieve the "ideal self"?

The assumptions on which these campaigns are built can at best be called "ugly".

Last year, a detailed Jezebel article showed us how these campaigns by product manufacturers are extremely gendered. Despite practising their own ways of selling lies and peddling blatant misogyny, these "empowering" brands promote women as narcissistic and under confident.  

By telling people that they can't choose to be average and must feel beautiful, Dove is creating a strange culture where beauty - and note that we are talking only about physical attributes - must define a person's life.