Would you describe yourself as average or beautiful?
That was the confronting choice given to a group of women in Dove’s latest campaign.
Their powerful new film shows women having to choose between one of two doors: one labelled “average”, and the other, “beautiful”. It’s a moving clip, and by the end it will have you questioning your own choice.
The Dove #choosebeautiful video:
Would I choose average, or beautiful? The question stopped me cold. Because I knew that if I had been given this choice, I would pick average immediately, without hesitation, every time.
And shockingly, so would at least 83 per cent of Australian women.
This disheartening result came from a recent Mamamia and Dove survey of over 11,000 women. In this survey, we asked women how they felt about themselves, their beauty and their confidence.
We found that for the vast majority of women, their overall confidence in their beauty was shockingly low.
Related: The scary link between Facebook and the way you feel about your body.
We found that those who chose average were 140 per cent more likely to dress for others compared to those who chose beautiful.
Not only this, but they were 146 per cent more likely to have negative thoughts about their appearance and to feel less confident about their beauty as they aged. They were also three times more likely to have no favourite feature of their body.
These results are upsetting, and true for the majority of Australian women – including me.
I was recently asked what my favourite body part was for an article – and I couldn’t come up with an answer. I sat there blankly, frantically telling myself to make something up so I could just respond.