Um thanks Dove?

Dove in their latest campaign is trying to boost women's self-esteem and confidence by telling them to Choose Beautiful. Two signs are placed above two different doors, thereby forcing women to make the choice whether they are "beautiful" or "average" by which door they decide to walk through.

While Dove's campaigns are really positive and are meant to be empowering, personally I find it weird for people to think it sad that so many women did not choose beautiful.

Before everyone gets their pitchforks out and roast me alive for saying so, hear me out. Isn't it a tad bit reductive to say that these women suffer from low self-esteem just because they chose average? Aren't we imposing too much meaning by inferring that a girl's "idea of beauty" is distorted by media just because she didn't choose beauty?

Um, yeah to say the least.

Yeah it's true, there might be a portion of ladies who felt the message was a real confidence booster, a great reminder that they should feel comfortable in their own skin, being who they are.

But feeling comfortable isn't the same as feeling beautiful. One can feel happy with the way they look without feeling like they're extraordinary beauties, and isn't that the whole beauty about beauty in the first place? Yes, everyone enjoys a good compliment once in a while, but true beauty doesn't come from knowing you're beautiful, but from being contented even if you don't feel like you look like Miss Universe. The self-demolition comes only because media and society places so much emphasis on external beauty, so it wouldn't help really if we keep veering the conversation back to physical beauty. Even if it is for a good positive message, by asserting such importance on the "feeling like you're beautiful" trope, aren't we still trapped in the process of defining what is beautiful and what isn't?

That being said, I do like some of Dove's other ads, such as the Real Beauty campaign, with different body types. That was a really simple ad, it didn't ask anyone to "feel beautiful" or "choose beautiful", but it just basically asked us to embrace who we are. After all, being beautiful only happens not when we conform to the media, nor when we choose to be, but ironically, it happens when we don't even think about being beautiful.