Dove Says Women Can Choose to Feel Beautiful

It’s a tale of two roads diverging in a yellow wood except it’s 2015 in a city and there are two doors to choose from — “beautiful” or “average” — which do you choose?

In Dove’s latest social experiment, it asked women in San Francisco, Shanghai, Delhi, London, and Sao Paulo to determine which attribute best described them by walking through a designated entryway.

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The video, which is part of the beauty brand’s #ChooseBeautiful campaign, captures women electing which adjective captures them best.

“It was a bit confronting to be honest, to see these big signs and feeling like you had to choose and be self-conscious of how you perceive yourself,” one participant said.

Each partaker approached the descriptors differently. While one felt that beautiful was “too far out of reach,” another hesitantly chose average, another regretted that determination, and someone else just walked away, forgoing either alternative.

When a mother confronted the portal with her daughter, who gravitated towards average, she pulled her to the other side. “I just wish more young women realised it,” she said of feeling confident in themselves.

A majority of women, 96 percent, said they wouldn’t choose the word beautiful to represent themselves, according to a study conducted by Dove, although about 80 percent admitted there is something beautiful about them.

"Women make thousands of choices each day — related to their careers, their families, and, let’s not forget, themselves,“ the company said in a statement. "Feeling beautiful is one of those choices that women should feel empowered to make for themselves, every day.”

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But is it really that easy to just shift one’s mindset? Probably not.

With impossible beauty standards being set by media images each day, low self-esteem is almost embedded into cultures around the world. As one woman asked, “Am I choosing because of what’s being constantly bombarded at me, what I’m being told that I should accept or am I choosing because it’s what I really believe?”

This is just one of Dove’s many thought-provoking advertisements. Over the past few years, the company’s campaigns have forced women to confront their insecurities.

In 2013, Sketches went viral and became the most shared ad ever. While the series is somewhat gimmicky at this point, they still send a powerful message.