Throughout recent years, campaigns and advertisements have created a distorted image of what true beauty is for women. Although companies want women to believe that using their products will allow them to reach this distorted idea of beauty, women continue to fall short of the look they so desperately want to achieve. This relentless desire to achieve perfect beauty has caused psychological problems for women that have led them to develop potentially deadly eating disorders and self-esteem problems. With the help of companies like Dove promoting campaigns for real beauty, the goal of transforming society’s view of beauty and ultimately restoring women’s self-esteem has become attainable.
All women constantly feel the pressure to look thinner, younger, and more like the women seen in beauty ads. This pressure begins for girls at a young age when they are most vulnerable to the opinions of people around them. Every time a young girl picks up a magazine, sees a television commercial, or simply goes to school she feels the need to change herself to look like the image of what is considered beauty. Instead of embracing their diversity, girls are obsessing over how to change themselves to fit the media’s definition of beautiful.
Today, people have become so accustomed to seeing beauty advertisements and trying to look a certain way that they do not realize that their differences are what makes them truly beautiful. Young girls are conditioned at a young age to set high beauty standards that always leave them unsatisfied. Therefore, both girls and women struggle with dangerous eating disorders and self-esteem problems. These problems are perpetuated by the advertisements and campaigns run by companies. Most executives of these companies do not stop to think how their messages impact women of all sizes and age. If these executives knew the damage that beauty advertising causes to their own daughters, mothers, and wives, then maybe they would think twice before they attempted to promote more unrealistic beauty goals.
Attempting to change the definition of beauty that is so deeply ingrained in a society is a seemingly impossible act. However, with companies like Dove showing the world that beauty comes in all forms, women can begin to understand that they do not have to try to treat themselves like an artist’s canvas that is covered and painted over to achieve a certain look. If people would take a moment to reflect on how their actions negatively impact women, then perhaps repairing the damage caused by beauty advertisements could begin to save women’s lives.
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