Beauty is not for sale: Dove's #ChooseBeautiful ad tells us
We live in a world where we are constantly judged. Bombarded and fed with perceptions that tend to define us, measure us and bracket us as individuals, both at the physical and mental levels. We are presented with the so called images of perfection, or what beautiful really is, and anything less leaves us feeling inadequate. Images that don’t define beauty in the real sense, but the biases of the individuals creating them.
All our lives we have heard things like, "Dark is not beautiful, fat is not beautiful, very fair is not beautiful, skinny is not beautiful, too tall is not beautiful, short is not beautiful". We have been led to believe that our beauty lies in our shape, our size and how pleasing our proportions appear to another person’s eyes. It completely negates the real us, the people within those differently shaped bodies.
What is worse is that the marketers of these perceptions want us to believe that their idea of beauty is our stepping stone to a happy, successful life. One which we desire. Not intellect, not our efforts, not the ideas, not our vision. None of these, but how we look will define who we are and how we are perceived by the world around us.
Subconsciously, whether we like it or not, we start believing in these definitions and rate ourselves accordingly.
The recently launched video by Dove, captures this bias beautifully.
As part of this video shoot, they set up two doors, one marked "Beautiful" and the other "Average" in five cities around the world (San Francisco, Shanghai, Delhi, London, and Sao Paolo). The crew then filmed the entrances to see which door the women would ultimately walked through.
The video tries to capture how everyday women perceive themselves. By choosing a door, the women make a conscious decision on how they describe themselves or how they think the world sees them. And once you see the video you realise that no matter how fair, thin, tall they are, or how pretty they might appear to you, in their own eyes they see themselves as average, because in their mind, they don’t match up to those images that they see everywhere, defined as "beautiful".
When interviewed later, many women admitted that they thought it would be too pretentious to walk through the door marked beautiful when they were just average.
The people who set these air brushed standards of beauty are thriving on the negative perceptions they create. According to the latest market research report from Lucintel, rising consumer incomes and changing lifestyles are driving the global beauty care products industry, which is forecasted to reach around $265 billion by 2017. That is a lot of money at stake.
Imagine if tomorrow women and men all around the world woke up and decided that they were happy with their appearance - the world might have to go through another economic depression. Looking good, feeling good about themselves is everyone’s prerogative, to each their own. In medieval times, women drank arsenic and dabbed on bat’s blood to improve their complexion. One of our former Prime Ministers, espoused the benefits of drinking one's own urine for better health and longevity. The desire to look beautiful is as old as civilisation and intrinsic to our survival, not just for our species but for other living beings too.
We all use and do different things to ensure we look our beautiful best. But our beautiful best should not be defined by someone sitting in a corporate office with million dollar targets to be achieved through the sale of their beauty products.
Investing time, energy and money in harnessing something that is bound to diminish with time, appears to be such a waste of resources. Instead, if we can teach ourselves to see beauty in people who are different than us, who are not just about how they look, but also about how they make us feel, it would be so much more valuable, building connections that are deeper.
I studied in a convent school for girls, one of the more famous ones in Kanpur. As I grew into a teenager, the pressure to fit in was immense. Being dark and chubby did not help my cause. Very early in life, I was made to realise that I did not meet the requirements of being considered beautiful and it was not one of my virtues. I started working on other aspects of my personality, those that would define me as a person, help me hold my own in a crowd of pretty faces.
But the scars remain. Long after.
Even today, I find it difficult to thank someone when they compliment me on my looks. I am just not used to it and somehow it has stopped mattering as much. Of course, I work on the way I look, and try to look presentable, but that is where it stops. I have learned to accept my physical flaws, I see them as an extension of who I am - they do not define me, because I am lot more than my weight, my looks, my colour.I believe that despite all of it I am beautiful! And when I face the world with that kind of self confidence, it's hard to convince anyone, otherwise.I see young girls and boys around me, going through an identity crisis, because they find themselves to be an outcast among those who are obsessed with beauty and looks. The shallowness of it all is creepy and the effect of all this on their psyche, unimaginable. In their bid to look pretty, they look beyond their age and it is easy to prey on their insecurities, which make them vulnerable and lacking in self confidence.
Do we really need to put our young through this?
I wish our matrimonial columns did not spell the virtues of a desirable bride as being fair and slim rather, efficient, independent and well educated.Look back, all the people we have truly liked or loved or enjoyed being with were not perfect by the worldly standards and yet they were perfect for us.
Do looks really matter when it comes to liking or loving someone?
It only takes a moment to pause and think - what is the kind of shallow society we are creating for ourselves and the generations ahead - one that measures its worth by the depth of its skin.