Hate society, not the victims of it.

Beauty product companies are flawed from the start. They prey on people who are afraid of how they look, promising with one swipe of a product they will be instantly transformed into something else. They create two products with the same ingredients (I’m not joking go read some bottles), make one blue, one pink and label them as strong vs beautiful and market them to men and women. I use 2-1 mens shampoo because it keeps my scalp from getting dandruff, sorry the bottle isn’t pink (no actually I’m not sorry) but it does the job. I don’t use weird cover ups that will make my skin itchy to cover the one crazy pimple I have on my face, even though I hate it and want it to go away immediately. I don’t like the idea that hygiene products and beauty products are grouped together. I don’t like that face lotion and body lotion are in separate aisles (which is less a commentary on society and more on how much shopping sucks). 

Other people wear make-up. They use dark circles correctors and age-deifiers. I use the products I use because I feel better and more confident that way (you know...not having dandruff confident). Other people use the stuff they use because it makes them feel more confident and happy. Who am I to say that someone shouldn’t wear make-up? It’s not my decision. They get to look how they want to look and that’s their deal. But we all do these little things because we want to look good and feel good. People lose weight less for health reasons and more because they think they will look better skinny. We care a lot in this society about what other people think. Too much, I would say. But I am guilty, as is everyone, of caring more about what random strangers think sometimes than what I think. 

And so when I watched the Dove Real Beauty commercial that is going around the webs, I felt good. Good because maybe my various flaws aren’t perceptible or important to the outside world. Good because maybe I should stop being so hard on myself and accept that I’m obviously way cuter than everyone else :-). Good because maybe the people I care about who hate themselves for how they look will realize that it’s not important to eliminate every single so-called flaw. As beauty product commercials go, this one was pretty solid. 
Here watch it for yourself:

Enter the progressives who are just so much better and more liberal than, like, everyone else. They made some really good, really solid points: like, why are crows feet considered a flaw? Why is “round-face” a flaw while “long, thin face” a positive descriptor? Those are very very valid. But that is much more a society problem, and less a Dove problem. Dove is a corporation, they are not worried about making people feel good or beautiful, they are worried about making money, and being talked about...and they succeeded. Their message was, “hey buy our stuff so you too can have a thin face.” Not cool, but what did any of us really expect from a corporation? Outward beauty is Dove’s entire purpose for existing. If they don’t convince us that it’s outward beauty that matters, they have failed because they are a company that wants to make money. 

But let’s talk about outward beauty, you know the thing you keep saying is a waste of time. Most (not all, but most) of the women who posted an issue with the Dove thing outwardly meet societies standards of beauty. White, cis-gendered, young, light hair, light eyes, and thin. And here you are telling the rest of the world not to care about outward beauty because it doesn’t matter. But it does. Looking good means being more confident. And I hate it as much as you do, but looking good helps with success. A resume can prove if you’re qualified, an interview proves if you look the part, can make the boss laugh, and aren’t lying on your resume. To say otherwise is to be lying, and first step to overcoming a problem is admitting you have a problem. Problem: beauty effects every single aspect of your life, personal, professional, and relationship. 

Dove didn’t set out to solve that problem, and I don’t fault them for that, we can’t solve every problem in one 3-minute spot. It doesn’t work like that. We have to chip away at the problem piece by piece. Step one: help people realize they are not as ugly as they think. Help people be confident in how they look. 

Dove set out to simply make people realize those crazy flaws aren’t really noticeable, thats a good, solid step in the right direction. Attacking Dove will not help us get to step two: helping people realize those “flaws” aren’t really flaws, they are life markers, proof that you have lived. And incorporating men into the fold, because men are more then just rough skin from all the hard labor in their lives. We will get there someday, to the point where outward beauty isn’t so important, but we can’t get from airbrushed models to perfection in one step. It takes time, it takes patience, and it takes appreciating those that make even the smallest forward steps. 

Dove is not perfect, I still won’t buy their stuff because I hate the overly-gendered marketing. But I will appreciate what they have done, because it made lots and lots of women feel better about themselves, and that is a good thing in my book.