New Dove Real Beauty campaign goes viral

A new beauty campaign by cosmetics brand Dove is going viral, with a refreshing look at body image, and our own self-critical attitudes. FBI-trained forensic artist Gil Zamora was employed by Dove in a fascinating new video experiment which explores the way women talk about their own appearance. Zamora chatted one-on-one to the unseen (and unsuspecting) women and asked them questions about their appearance in order to build up a composite sketch of their face and hair. Before they went into the experiment, the women had each chatted individually with one of the other participants, who was then asked to redescribe the other woman to Zamora. When each woman was presented with the two sketches, one built up from their own description and the other produced via the eyes of a perfect stranger, the results were pretty compelling; "women are their own worst beauty critics," says Dove. According to the brand "only 4% of women around the world consider themselves beautiful," and the women themselves were stunned by the difference between their own descriptions of their faces (which focussed on their flaws) and the way other people saw them. First launched in 2004 the Dove 'campaign for real beauty' has seen the brand explore the natural variations of the female body in their marketing, including giant billboard posters which asked passers by to vote whether a woman was"fat" or "fab".