Dove's 'Real Beauty Sketches' Video Empowers, Goes Viral

In 2004, the popular body-product brand, Dove, aired a commercial that had people watching television in their living rooms do a double take. The commercial featured women in a solid white bra and panties. The women were giggling and for all intensive purposes, modeling. However, these women were not professional models, but full-sized, naturally curvy women that participated in Dove's Campaign for Real Beauty. In 2010, the brand expanded upon the idea of having depictions of female beauty defined in a more wholesome manner; not restricted to models with perfectly symmetrical faces, surf-board stomachs, and thighs small enough to have a hand clasp around it. Though not yet aired on TV, Dove has uploaded the newest addition to commercials that touch on women's self-esteem, after two years.  

(see video below)

The full video, at just over six minutes and 30 seconds, begins with women stating their facial flaws and what they would want to change about themselves. The soundtrack to the video is a somber instrumental number that accurately reflects the saddening reality that, "only four percent of women around the world consider themselves beautiful."

The only male protagonist in the video is Gil Zimora, an FBI academy-trained forensic artist. Zimora was sitting with an easel on which a sketching pad was mounted. His job was to draw women according to how they described themselves, without looking at them at all. A curtain partitioned the woman and Zimora whose back was already facing the women. To add to the dramatic effect, Gil was sitting in a large empty loft with floor-to-window ceilings and hardwood floors that amplified the footsteps of each woman as they entered one-by-one to have their portraits drawn.

Without asking for a name, Zimora would instruct the women to describe specific features about themselves. "Tell me about your hair" and "your jaw," he would say. One of the women, Florence, had described her jaw according to how her mother would describe it, "big." Florence, like the other women, attested to not being aware of what Zimora was doing at the start, but "could tell, after several questions, that he was drawing me." She also said that prior to her blind encounter with Zimora, she was told to socialize with one other person, male or female.

The women who described themselves to Zimora were paired off so that the person they got acquainted with could describe their facial features to Gil Zimora. Again, the forensic artist would huddle over his easel and have his back facing the person describing physical features for him to draw. The tone of these speakers, describing the women who had been sketched prior to encountering them, was notably more upbeat than the tone of the women themselves. Suddenly, descriptions of the women included superlatives. One man told Gil, "She had nice eyes. They lit up when she spoke." Another person described the women she met as having a "short, cute nose."

At the end of the video, each of the women's two sketches, one as described by herself and one as described by the person she met, were hung up side-by-side. The former sketch was far less forgiving than the latter because the women described themselves with a number of flaws they did not necessarily have. Realizing her skewed body image, Florence said, "I should be more grateful of my natural beauty." The corresponding YouTube comments show that the video tugs on the heart strings of millions.

"Every woman needs to see this video, it made me reevaluate the way I see myself and realize that I am not alone," wrote a user going by the handle XpurplepeopleeaterXX.