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Real Beauty

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In one of the most famous Dove films, Real Beauty Sketches explores the gap between how others perceive us and how we perceive ourselves. Each woman is the subject of two portraits drawn by FBI-trained forensic artist Gil Zamora: one based on her own description, and the other using a stranger’s observations. The results are surprising.

Additional Resources for you to Explore

How Dove's 'Real Beauty Sketches' became one of the most viral video ads of all time

Just one month after its release, Dove's "Real Beauty Sketches" has garnered more than 114 million total views, making it the most viral video of all time. Read the article here.

Parody Video

In response, there’s already one spoof video that has a number of men in a curtained enclosure, like in the Dove ad. At the end, the portraits reveal that men see themselves as George Clooney or Brad Pitt while women see them as freakish. Watch the video here

The good, the bad, and the ugly of the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty

The Dove Campaign for Real Beauty has been called a lot of things, from a “game changer” and “a breath of fresh air”, to “hypocritical”, “sexist”, and “sneaky”. So why has the campaign, whose major innovation was to use ads that featured real women rather than airbrushed models or celebrity spokespersons, sparked so much controversy? Taking a social psychological perspective, this article attempts to address the good, the bad, and possibly even the ugly side of Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty.

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