Are You Beautiful or Average? The One This Woman Chose Made Me Cry

[sheshe2]

I’m not going to lie, my eyes are a little watery right now after watching this new Dove web ad. In the past year, so many products have launched advertising campaigns that empower and promote those who purchase their products. The Always #LikeAGirl campaign was one of the most notable.

When given the opportunity to go through two doors, one that says “Beautiful” and one that says “Average,” women were forced to decide how they view themselves. The doors were placed all over the world in different languages and time after time I watched women who don’t see themselves as beautiful.

(READ MORE: Model Cameron Russell’s TEDx Talk: Image is Powerful, and Superficial)

Model Cameron Russell’s TEDx Talk: Image is Powerful, and Superficial

In October of 2012, American super model Cameron Russell gave a TEDx talk titled “Looks aren’t everything. Believe me, I’m a model.” She began her talk by walking onto the stage wearing a wee-short little black dress and heels so high they would make anyone’s toes cry “uncle,” and introduced herself. She then promptly began to change her clothing, adding a long wrap-around skirt, a sweater, and flats.

“Image is powerful, but also image is superficial. I just transformed what you thought of me in six seconds,” Russell said. “How we look, though it is superficial and immutable, has a huge impact on our lives.”

“So today, for me, being fearless means being honest. And I am on this stage because I am a model,” she said. “I am on this stage because I am a pretty, white woman, and in my industry we call that a ‘sexy girl’. And I’m going to answer the questions that people always ask me, but with an honest twist.”

Russell answers the questions that she perceives the audience of having and exposes the flawed perception of beauty and privilege that is put on display on magazines and runways by professionals that “build” these women, constructing them into objects of desire — sometimes before they’re even old enough to have had a boyfriend or their first period. Russell realizes she’s won the “genetic lottery,” stating she’s the “recipient of a legacy” that history has defined “not just as health and youth and symmetry that we’re biologically programmed to admire, but also as tall, slender figures, and femininity and white skin.” She backs up that claim by revealing that in 2007 a NYU Ph.D. student counted every single model on the runway, and out of 677 models only 27 were non-white.

Newsflash to women everywhere: You’re beautiful. Whether you think you’re too skinny or too curvy or you’ve got the post-kid sag, or you’re just leaving the gym and sweat is dripping down your ass and you you feel icky. You’re still beautiful.

I loved the mom who pulled her daughter over to the “beautiful” door when she tried to go through the “average” door. Good for mom. Watching this made me want to hug all of these women and look them directly in the eye and tell them how beautiful they are. All of you.

http://bluenationreview.com/beautiful-average-one-women-chose-made-cry/

[seabeyond]

1. wow. that was excellent. hey... with that choice, huge smile and easily the beautiful....

cool. that was fun.

[sheshe2]

2. Hey, going for beautiful here.

One way or the other, I am beautiful. We all are, sea. You can have all the physical beauty in the world, yet if you have no beauty and laughter in your heart, you have nothing.

Ray Charles sees more as a blind man than most see with sight.

Ooops~ Forgot the link.

http://bluenationreview.com/beautiful-average-one-women-chose-made-cry/

[Marie Marie]

3. Loved this sheshe..

Beauty is a state of mind - and it is time for all women to think it, believe it, claim it and then, OWN IT!! Great post.

[sheshe2]

4. You~

"Beauty is a state of mind - and it is time for all women to think it, believe it, claim it and then, OWN IT!!"

YES IT IS! Thank you, Marie Marie!

[thesquanderer]

5. I actually find this a bit disturbing and in a sense anti-feminist

Imagine a comparable experiement for men, with doors marked Handsome and Average. Sure, you could do it, but it would be completely different in its impact on the participants, because men are not judged as overwhelmingly on looks alone.

So here we have a project that, at its core, seems to be trying to make all women see themselves as beatiful. Doesn't that just reinforce that the most important thing a woman should be is beautiful? Is that really a good thing?

Rather than trying to convince every woman that she is in some way beautiful, I think it might be better to try to get people to see that, just as for men, appearance is not the most important thing about a woman.

But if we accept that as futile, then maybe this is the next best thing...?

[sheshe2]

7. Well, we are not talking about men here since this is HoF.,

So here we have a project that, at its core, seems to be trying to make all women see themselves as beatiful. Doesn't that just reinforce that the most important thing a woman should be is beautiful? Is that really a good thing?

No, sorry you missed the point. You missed it completely. Beauty is not outward, it is inward as well. It is the beauty of our souls and our hearts. It is how we perceive ourselves in a society that wants us thin, sexy and objects. You misread, we need the laughter and light in our hearts, that is the beauty. The beauty in our very souls is what radiates. To you, we may be common. Us, we are so very beautiful, loving and kind. We are awesome. No one will tell me any different.

[thesquanderer]

12. "We are aweseome" - I agree, but it's kind of a shame that "awesome" isn't enough.

It is the reinforcement of the imperative to be "beautiful" that I find to be a double-edged sword.

(p.s. - my post #11 was in part a reply to you as well)

(p.p.s. - about your subject line, I wasn't talking about men, but mentioning men to make a point about the contrast between how society sees men and women seems very appropriate for feminist conversation, no?)

[Scootaloo]

9. "Beauty" comes in a panopoly of forms

This stunt actually breaks down the notion of it being solely defined by "supermodel looks" or the like. And when you are laden with a constant message that having "supermodel looks" is the one and only standard of beauty, that any other notion of beauty is wholly invalid, that any deviation from "supermodel looks" is wrong, inferior, ugly, undesirable... a reaffirmation that that standard is false is pretty powerful.

And even if one constrains it to physicality, the difference between thinking of yourself as beautiful and not is staggering, and can have a huge impact on the rest of your life.

Personal experience: About ten years ago, I suffered a dog attack. A rescued "bait dog" I was caring for got spooked and bit my face. I had to go in for reconstructive surgery to get the left side of my nose re-attached. Some pieces were missing, so they had to graft skin and cartilage from my ear. The surgeon did a good job, and apparently most people can't notice until i point it out. But i noticed. Oh boy did i notice. This (thankfully) relatively minor deformation to my nose actually sent me into a pretty deep depression and identity crisis for almost three years. I was convinced i looked like Frankenstein's monster or something. I lost almost all of my self-confidence, retreated from work and friends,. and was basically a total wreck, because of self-inflicted damage to my perception of myself.

I can only imagine what it must be like to have this same message thrown at you from birth, by an entire culture. The self-doubt and low perception of one's own worth it causes must be absolutely enormous.

Me, I got out of it. I came to terms, and forget about it until the weather gets cold. But women and girls, they have this same stream of doubt and denigration - that their bodies are all that matter AND that hteir bodies are "sub-standard" - thrown at them 24/7, from all angles, all their lives.

[zazen]

10. I see your point: perhaps they could have added a third door labelled "human"

In a Foucauldian/critical theory sense the supposed freedom from the constraining notion (ugly, average) is produced and thus similarly constrained/mandated in advance. Maybe a third door without any label would have been ideal.

What's confusing although understandable is that the term beautiful is being used differently throughout this thread. We all seem to want to expand the term itself to mean "sacred" or "unique and equal member of the human race"--anything to push beyond the narrow, oppressive cultural definition of physical beauty--but the very dichotomization reinforces what it intends to critique.

[thesquanderer]

11. That's a good point, that the goal is to redefine what constitutes "beauty"

and the replies from sheshe2 and scootaloo touched on that as well. And there is obvious enormous virtue in that. But in a sense, it's still a shame that a woman's self-worth is so tied up in having to find some way to see herself as "beautiful" (whereas of course men are not so pigeonholed into having to be "something&quot . But I guess changing the societal imperative that "women must be beautiful" may be futile, so this alternative "all women are beautiful" may be the next best thing.

[calimary]

6. I. LOVE. THIS.

And I love the epiphany the women in this experiment had. Empowering!!!

[sheshe2]

8. Luv ya~

[Warpy]

13. The two doorways could have as easily said "real" and "false"

I never fantasized about being a model. I was too short, I never wore makeup and I wasn't particularly into fashion. Besides, I did have one or two friends who had gone that route who described it to me as the most boring job in the world, the hours of prep and the long shoot trying for that one perfect photo and the airbrushing afterward to produce something that didn't look anything like they did.

A model in full regalia would have gone through the "beautiful" door without question. In civvies, she'd have gone through the "average" one like the rest of us. It's not because we think we're ugly. It's because we think we're real. "Beautiful" is too often false and created by paint and Photo Shop.