despotrico

Recently, Dove released another video that encourages women to perceive themselves as beautiful rather than average, positing that women are their own harshest critics where looks are concerned. While this is a positive message and evidently an effective campaign, I think it is important to look at this another way:

Women should be able to feel confident and good about themselves without ever factoring in their physical appearance. If a woman (or any other individual) chooses walks through the “average” door, that should not immediately mean that she does not feel successful or powerful; it could mean that she does not include beauty as a qualifier for her self worth. 

I can’t help but think while watching these videos and reading the reactionary comments of other viewers (Ex: ”You’re all beautiful, ladies <3″ or “It’s so sad that anyone would ever walk through the Average door”) that we as an audience are, at the root, still making value judgements based solely on the construct of physical beauty. Yes, this video encourages us to widen the boundaries of what we see as beautiful, and I don’t think that is a negative message. However, the implications of seeing yourself as “average” in this video are disturbing to me. Average does not inherently mean “sad about being average and desperately in need of Dove’s reassurance.” “Average”, like “Beautiful”, is just an adjective that everyone is going assign different levels of significance to. 

Also, shoutout to Dylan who knows about this blog now and is definitely going to read it even though I told him not to

SO MANY PEOPLE I WILL PISS OFF REGARDLESS OF THE CHOICES

SO MUCH FUTURE TO CONSIDER