Dove's 'Choose Beautiful' Campaign Raises Questions About Our Self-Image

Dove, to its credit, was one of the first major global brands to shun the usual advertising requirement for overly slender women to represent their products.

Their 'Real Beauty' campaig, which launched originally in 2004 chose to use a cross section of female models that they felt were more representative of their client base.

And big congratulations to them for taking that step.

Although there has since been some debate about whether it is appropriate to term curvier women as "real", thereby suggesting that thinner models are somehow not "real", it was still an important step forwards on the part of a major retailer.

Since the 'Real Beauty' advert, Dove has continued its commitment to bettering the female psyche, by finding new ways to draw attention to our lack of self-belief and disappointing self-image.

In this 'Choose Beautiful' commercial, Dove completed an experiment whereby the team labelled sets of two entranceways in five different cities all over the world with 'Beautiful' on one and 'Average' on the other and then watched which door most women chose to walk through.

Suffice it to say the majority of women picked the 'Average' door - which appears to confirm the results of a global survey have revealed that a staggering 96 per cent of women would describe themselves as "average" if asked.

The women in the video, when invited to speak about their choices, made statements such as: "Beautiful to me is way too far out of reach" and "I went through the 'Average' door...I didn't even hesitate."

Of course, some will argue that the women may have sensed that they were being watched and will have picked 'Average' out of a desire to project humility, rather than pride in appearances.

This begs the question though: if presented with exactly the same experiment, would men make the same decisions?

The message still stands that, we women still have a very difficult relationship with ourselves when it comes to how we look.

The idea is not, of course, to convey any blame, but the consensus is that while we continue to place a particular image of perfection - tall, thin and, usually, white - on a pedestal, we will continue to perpetuate feelings of self-loathing or failures in confidence among the rest of the female community.

["I'm No Angel" - Campaign Blasts Victoria's Secret Body Ideals]

[Victoria's Secret 'Perfect Body' Campaign Branded Offensive]

What do you think of Dove's latest campaign? Let us know in the comments!