You Are Beautiful

At Large : A beauty 'debate'

Rina Jimenez-David
Inquirer News Service

AN UNUSUAL advertising campaign, unusual at least for beauty, skin and body-care products, will soon be hitting the streets. The campaign doesn't seek to "sell" physical attraction and the ideal of beauty as the promised result of continued use and patronage. Rather, it raises questions about the nature and definition of "beauty" itself, challenging consumers to rethink their concept of beauty and to begin to think of themselves as beautiful.

This indeed is revolutionary change. Dove's "Campaign for Real Beauty" stands beauty advertising on its head. The cosmetics and skin-care industry has mostly sought the loyalty of women consumers with advertising based on "fear," as The Body Shop's Anita Roddick postulates. To Roddick, it was a crime to market products aimed at 40- and 50-year-olds by using 18-year-old models. Such campaigns not only created unnecessary paranoia about "old age" conditions like wrinkles, age spots, dry skin and gray hair, but also tended to create a cycle of frustration.

Scared into thinking that they were turning into hags, middle-aged women would buy so-called "age-defying" products by the sackload, only to be frustrated time and again when the results were nowhere near those promised by the glossy ads. The women could not be aware, of course, that no matter how one tried, and even with "scientific" intervention, there was no way a middle-aged woman could look like a youthful model, or even regain the looks and body she sported in her teens and 20s.

But even younger women are not spared this cycle of aspiration and frustration. Teenagers, especially, are vulnerable to unreachable expectations created by most consumer advertising (as well as editorial material) touting everything from toothpaste to deodorants, fashion to fitness, cell phones to jewelry. And when even possession of all these trendy and fashionable items fail to transform their ordinary-duckling selves into the ravishing swans of commercials and lay-outs, teenage girls could end up with a serious case of self-loathing that at times are expressed through self-mutilation, eating disorders and depression.

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INSPIRED by a groundbreaking study conducted a few years ago among American and European women by Unilever and Harvard University on women's concept of beauty, on which was based Dove's Campaign for Real Beauty, Unilever conducted a similar study covering more than 2,000 women across 10 Asian countries.

Not surprisingly, the Asian study came up with nearly similar results. Fewer than 3 percent of the female respondents in the Asian study said they were "beautiful," about the same result in the Western study.

Filipinas, in fact, proved to be most confident of their looks, with 5 percent saying they believed they were "beautiful." Filipinas also top the "beauty happiness scale," with 87 percent (compared to 34 percent in Korea, say) saying they were satisfied with their appearance. Perhaps fatalism has something to do with this. Very few of us may believe we are beautiful, but we are by and large resigned to living with our looks.

The Filipina respondents also had quite a mouthful to say about the media and their role in creating the near-impossible ideals of beauty. A total of 77 percent wished that media did a better job of portraying women of diverse physical characteristics, while 84 percent wished that media "could give women more confidence in their own looks and beauty." But oddly enough, 68 percent said they also thought models used in beauty ads were "good role models for young girls."

Like it did in United States, Canada and Europe, Dove has created advertising that challenges conventional Asian attributes of beauty, such as fair skin, flawless complexion, long shiny hair, svelte figure and even large breasts.

The only Filipina model in the campaign, dusky skinned management trainee Mia Sebastian, is featured in an ad that asks the consumer to decide: Dark? Or Dazzling? These ads, asking the public to "join the beauty debate" by ticking boxes that best describe the "real women" shown, will soon be seen in magazines, billboards and posters.

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TO LAUNCH the campaign, the Women's Media Circle, an NGO working for the empowerment of women and girls in the media, partnered with Dove on a "debate" on beauty last Wednesday, with a panel of speakers moderated by talk-show host Boy Abunda, himself an object of beauty.

It was an interesting mix of personalities, persuasions and opinions, with the participants including Sebastian, Unilever marketing director Noel Lorenzana, the ageless former Miss Universe and actress Gloria Diaz, MTV VJ Nicole Fonacier, global debater and media personality Patricia Evangelista, talk-show host and commercial model Drew Arellano, renowned cosmetic surgeon Dr. Florencio Lucero, sociologist and University of the Philippines professor Dr. Josefina Natividad, and this columnist.

Boy set the discussion going by asking the glorious Miss Diaz to repeat her assertion that "99 percent of beauty is based on youth, so older women have to work hard on the remaining one percent." Dr. Lucero confirmed the perceived link between youth and beauty, saying most of his clients come to him asking him to "make me look younger" and not necessarily more beautiful.

Nicole, who became a plus-size role model when she won in the MTV VJ search, debunked myths about beauty standards, saying it was all a matter of "self-confidence" and belief in oneself. And indeed, we are attracted to many other things besides the physical -- things like good health, confidence, poise and humor. And when the physical is deficient, or past its prime, then it behooves one to develop the intangibles, qualities that time can neither wrinkle nor sag.