This morning a friend of mine sent a 3-minute YouTube video that was entitled, “Dove Real Beauty Sketches.” At the beginning of the video, we see a large loft space where there is a chair next to a curtain. A group of women have agreed to participate in the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty, but have not been told what will be required of them. A forensic sketch artist sits on the other side of a curtain with his easel and pencils in front of him. Each woman goes alone into the room and sits down. The artist begins asking questions such as “What color is your hair?” and “What is your most prominent feature?” The women soon realize they are sitting for a portrait.
It is noteworthy that the women describe their flaws rather than their assets. “I’m beginning to get crow’s feet around my eyes,” one young woman says. Another mentions that her mother has always described her as having “a big jaw.” These are normal-looking “attractive” women who have no glaring physical defects. They are your mothers, sisters, daughters, and girlfriends.
Afterward, another person who has been designated as the “partner” for each of the women is invited into the loft and asked to describe her for the artist. Each has only met with their assigned woman for a brief time. The artist then draws a new portrait of the woman from the partner’s description.
The portraits are placed side-by-side and each woman is asked to return and view the differences. In each case, the woman’s description of herself produces a severe portrait, emphasizing scars, freckles, wrinkles or extra weight. In contrast, the partner’s description of the woman results in a softer rendition, highlighting the beauty of the woman’s eyes, nose or cheekbones.
The women are then asked to comment on what they see. Each displays a mixture of embarrassment and shock. One says, “Mine is clearer uglier.” When asked if the partner’s portrait is more in line with how other people describe her, the woman nods. “Yes, it is.” Another woman sums it up by saying, “I’ve come a long way in how I see myself, but clearly I still have a long way to go.”
By the end of the video, I felt as if I needed to go and have what my mother used to refer to as a “good” cry. The women who had volunteered were lovely, each one of them, but the portraits drawn from their personal descriptions conveyed little of their natural beauty or the kindness in their faces. This is familiar turf for me. My own children tell me often that I am too hard on myself in reference to my appearance and that I need to have a more positive self-image. I know this is true by looking at old photos of myself and being surprised that I look as pretty as I do. I often remember where I was when the picture was taken and feeling unhappy at the time that it wasn’t that flattering. Yes, a few years can bring a clearer perspective.
I must admit that it is profoundly sad that at sixty-years-old I am still struggling with this issue. I find it disheartening to see other woman still struggling, as well. Clearly, we need to be kinder to our girls (and ourselves) about what defines beauty and to help women get clearer about how character defines beauty not the other way around. These issues go to the core of our society and where our values lie. After all, it’s not just me being neurotic about my looks. These thought-provoking “beauty sketches” uncover an unfortunate truth: I am only one of many women who engage in this hypercritical assessment of physical attractiveness.
Hats off to the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty for delving deeper into women’s misperception about their physical appearance. We need reminders that we women have all bought into the advertising myth that there is a “perfect” woman out there and that we need to aspire to meet that unrealistic standard of beauty. Embracing ourselves in all of our humanness seems a nobler and more life-affirming goal.
Mary Oliver has a poem that addresses this quite well:
Wild Geese
You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on. Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers. Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting– over and over announcing your place in the family of things.
Today I plan to embrace Oliver’s encouragement “to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.” This seems the pure and simple answer to move away from unnecessary self-scrutiny and towards my place “in the family of things.”
How about you?
Here is a link to the Dove video, if you’re interested:
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