The Dove Campaign for Real Beauty has launched a new advertisement aimed at exposing the "beauty pressures" that bombard young girls.
The attention-grabbing , titled "Onslaught," had already received nearly 150,000 views on YouTube in just two days.
The ad shows a young girl staring into the camera and then cuts away to a barrage of images featuring models in bikinis and infomercial snippets promoting products to make the viewer "younger, smaller, lighter, fuller, tighter, thinner, softer."
The video then shows women having plastic surgery to alter their butts, breasts, stomachs, eyes, lips and other body parts.
The commercial ends with the slogan: "Talk to your daughter before the beauty industry does," and is meant to show the damage that the unrealistic messages can have on the future of the young girl.
The video, created by ad agency Ogilvy & Mather in Toronto, follows the extreme popularity of the agency's first "Evolution" video for Dove.
That ad showed the time-lapsed transition of a woman without makeup into a model on a billboard.
The woman starts off with facial blemishes and is then transformed by a makeup crew and computer retouching team into a "beautiful" model.
The latest ad was influenced by new research that found four in 10 girls and young women only see their flaws when they look in the mirror.
The survey, conducted by the Dove Self-Esteem Fund and Seventeen, also found that 56 per cent of girls and young women thought celebrities tended to have perfect bodies.
Jessica Weiner, self-esteem expert and global ambassador for the Dove Self-Esteem Fund, says girls today are exposed more than ever to beauty ideals promoted by Hollywood and the media.
"Mothers, mentors and friends can help change girls' perceptions with positive, self-esteem building discussions and activities," Weiner said in a press release.
Contradiction?
Dove is owned by Unilever, which is also the parent company of Slim-Fast and numerous beauty products.
On the Unilever website, women are told that actress Mischa Barton's "waves can be yours in just thirty minutes."
If Barton's not your taste, the website gives tips on how to get "silky straight locks" like Paris Hilton or the "Oscar-winning hair" of Nicole Kidman.
Dove Canada's Alison Leung defended the seeming mixed-messages in a recent interview.
"Dove exists on its own," Leung told the Toronto Star.
Along with the new ad, the Dove Self-Esteem Fund is sponsoring upcoming self-esteem building workshops.
During the events, celebrities and self-esteem experts will reveal secrets about the armies of stylists, makeup artists, photographers, and staging and computer technicians that are used to create "beauty."
The movement will also feature new online tools in an effort to educate the public.
The Dove Self-Esteem Fund/Seventeen Body Image Survey also revealed:
- The average person sees between 400 and 600 advertisements per day -- equivalent to more than one message for every waking minute.
- The average U.S. girl has the opportunity to see an estimated 77,546 commercials by the time she is 12 years old.
- 58 percent of girls describe themselves in negative terms, including words like "disgusting" and "ugly," when feeling badly about themselves.
- Nearly four out of 10 engage in unhealthy eating behaviors, such as anorexia or bulimia.
- More than one out of 10 girls has used cutting or self-inflicted injury as a coping mechanism.
The Dove Campaign for Real Beauty is a global effort that launched in 2004 after a commissioned study by the brand found that only two per cent of women around the world described themselves as beautiful.
