Progress

Dove recently released an ad. More specifically they released an attempt at a viral video where they performed an experiment to compare people's self-conceptions with the perceptions of others. I have to say, I was moved. The amount of dimorphic adjustments the people did to their faces was fascinating. The emphasis that they put on what they saw as negative traits made the pictures show up radically different.

That is apparently not what some people took from that. They saw it as overly condoning of the modern "unnatural" standard of beauty. They saw it as racist. As unfair to the people who looked like the "negative" reflections. They saw it as the patriarchy once again laying the hammer on the Female of the species because it was saying in clear implications that a woman has no other value then in the prettiness of her face. We are all beautiful and to try and put any standards of what beauty is is a crime against mankind. How dare you! How dare you try and pass this off as anything but another attempt of the Culture to keep us down!

That's not directly what I saw, but it is an extrapolation of the feelings I gathered from behind the words. Is it fair? Probably not, but I'm writing on the internet so I don't need to be fair.

What I saw was an attempt at making people look at how they see themselves against what others see them as. The whole Dove Real Beauty marketing scheme is try and expand our cultural definition of beauty. Some say or at least it seems to me that they're saying that we shouldn't have one. We're all beautiful.

Only we're not.

There are beautiful people. And there are ugly ones. And it generally has nothing to do with what their meat looks like. We're not all beautiful. I know. I've met a number of truly foully ugly people. Some of them even were physically unattractive. But I'm wandering from the point I want to make.

Expanding the standards of beauty is the best step towards making this whole situation better. Because it's a baby step. Being overly angry about this step not going far enough is like screaming at a 2nd grader cause they can't do their taxes. You can read? You can add and subtract? That's all you need right there.

I'm not implying that you don't have a right to your anger, because you do. But I think there are better uses then casting down the folks that are trying to meet in the middle. We're all human. We make mistakes and large groups of us are all the more likely too. Human beings are prone to messing up, of making terrible choices and standing by them far after they make any sense too. And once more I'm not trying to disagree, you make some really solid points. However the amount of weight you are putting on this I'm not sure is there.

It was a meme.

And generally had a better message than most of the ones I've seen. It was at least aiming at positive, even if it wasn't a perfect representation.

And regardless, I think you're beautiful.

Unless you're an asshole.