Dove - "Choose Beautiful"
“Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice.” - Steve Jobs
Now personally I prefer women sans makeup but my grandmother was always fond of saying “a little powder and paint never hurt anybody”. While beauty is in the eye of the beholder, Dove’s recent #ChooseBeautiful campaign celebrates the fact that beauty actually comes from within.
Unfortunately amidst the constant barrage of advertisements promoting the 'ideal' image - it’s entirely too easy for our internal voice to get drowned out. This is where the power of the Dove commercial comes from. They challenge everyday women with a choice between two identical doors that go to the same place – the only difference is that one door is labeled beautiful and the other is labeled average.
The simple act of walking through a door with a label gives pause to just about everyone and in the aftermath of the choice the women are filmed explaining their reasoning. Over the course of the installation women began to change the door they chose, with some deciding the next day to change how they viewed themselves.
It could be argued that “beautiful” and “average” are just words that shouldn’t dictate how to view oneself, but judging by the reactions of women, a simple choice had a huge impact. What became clear however is that by establishing that it is a choice, participants had the freedom to express themselves and have an open conversation about how we all have the right to identify as beautiful people.
Beauty is not just skin-deep; it comes from the way we act and how we view ourselves. Otherwise it is just an empty shell without a soul. In design school I was taught that the lowest rung on the ladder is the "style refresh" - slapping some new skin on an outdated idea. It’s one thing to make something look sexy, but it’s quite another to make something feel sexy. When it comes to going deeper than the surface, discovering the unique essence of what makes someone or something special and celebrating that is what counts.
The pursuit of an ideal form plays a tremendous role in the creation of objects. Taking time to consider details like how materials age and objective factors such as clarity, authenticity and simplicity is what determines beauty in design.
