In The Beauty Prescription, we talk about the Dove ad campaign called Real Beauty that ran in 2007, showing how beautiful real women with curves and gray hair and non-model figures can be when they’re not made to be embarrassed about themselves. We loved this campaign and know lots of women who did, but it turns out that wasn’t the end of the story. Dove and its parent company, Unilever, have also been building something called the Dove Self-Esteem Fund, which intends to reach out to 5 million young women around the world by 2010. The goal is one we couldn’t support more enthusiastically: to help free young women from self-limiting beauty stereotypes that lead to low self-esteem, body dysmorphia, eating disorders and a generally negative self-image. So far, the program has reached more than 2 million young women around the globe and continues to raise money for its efforts.
This is exactly the kind of thing we support in our book, our medical careers and our private lives. We both have daughters, and we shudder to think of them growing up burdened by the same expectations of a perfect face and body that we’ve seen scar many of our patients. To combat this, Dove is doing things like creating online-only short films (one of which won two awards at Cannes) and partnering with organizations like the Girl Scouts to produce nearly 2,700 self-esteem building and educational events in the U.S., U.K. and around the world. Concerned moms can go to the Fund’s website and find all sorts of tools they can use with their own girls.
This is a cause not just worth supporting but worth emulating. It’s wonderful to see a corporation focus on using its influence to improve the lives of the people who it hopes will buy their products. Sure, they are doing it with a profit motive and trying to win hearts and minds, but there’s nothing wrong with that. Dove could have just done a public service announcement and called it a day, but they didn’t. They’re using their resources to make a positive difference, and for that they deserve to be lauded and supported.
One of the most controversial aspects of healthcare in recent years has been the advent of aggressive, “ask your doctor about…” style advertising. It’s blamed for the dramatic increase in the rise of prescription drug use, but it’s also played a role in the increasing popularity of plastic surgery (up 59 percent from 2000 to 2007) and the two-year increase in the average age of patients seeking the top 10 cosmetic procedures (according to the American Academy of Cosmetic Surgery). So many women and men are so eager to look younger than their years that they are apparently willing to believe questionable claims from companies and clinics offering unrealistic plastic surgery results.
If you’ve read our book, The Beauty Prescription, then you know that we’re in favor of plastic surgery—when it’s appropriate. It isn’t always. Any surgery comes with hazards, and often women can achieve more satisfying improvements to their inner and outer beauty by making changes in their lifestyle, such as eating a healthy diet, getting in shape and maintaining a smart skin care regimen. Certainly in some cases plastic surgery can be a blessing, but not when it’s based on misperceptions based on ads that are, frankly, fraudulent. We’re not talking about the airbrushed photos of models in the newspapers; most readers are savvy enough to take those with a grain of salt. We’re talking about breast augmentation clinics that promise breasts that are anatomically impossible, and “lunchtime face lifts” that are little more than snake oil. Such misleading marketing costs patients big money (since many cosmetic procedures are elective and thus not covered by insurance) and puts them at risk.
So bravo to the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons, which has come out with a strong statement condemning such false advertising at its annual conference. The group called out such practices as clinics that offer “act now” discounts of up to $500 to women who had breast augmentation surgery quickly. You don’t have to be psychic to know that such incentives are bound to lead to rash decisions and bad outcomes, especially among young women who are willing to believe that they can look like Pamela Anderson with three easy payments.
We can only hope that we’ll soon hear the same kind of responsible, ethical talk from the billion-dollar U.S. plastic surgery industry—and it would be even better if it had some sort of regulatory teeth behind it. We’ll keep you posted.
When you think of cosmetics spokeswomen, odds are you think of Drew Barrymore, Claudia Schiffer and Cindy Crawford. You probably don’t think of tomboyish, openly gay talk show hosts. But that’s exactly what we think makes the selection of Ellen DeGeneres as the new Cover Girl celebrity spokesperson so wonderful. In our book, The Beauty Prescription, we center our message around the idea that beauty comes as much from within—from personal magnetism and self-love—as from the face or body. But that’s hard to swallow when you see the entertainment media all agog over the latest pretty face and sexy figure while ignoring women of real substance and intelligence.
Enter Ellen. Exit, at least for the time being, shallow perceptions of what makes a woman beautiful. Because by Hollywood’s typical standards, Ellen DeGeneres is not a glamour girl. She doesn’t have Kiera Knightley cheekbones or J-Lo curves. She wears mannish clothes and a boyish haircut. In fact, her new wife, Portia Di Rossi, fits the “beautiful” stereotype much better than Ellen. But it’s what Ellen does have that makes us so delighted with her Cover Girl selection: a tremendously likable quality—an inner beauty—that makes everyone, men and women, want to hug her and take her home to be our cool big sister. She has charisma and charm and humor and self-confidence in ample supply, and she comes across as someone who’s 100% real and happy with who and what she is. You know from watching her daytime talk show that she’s going to approach her Cover Girl gig the way she does everything else: with wit and self-deprecating humor and perspective.
Yes, Ellen DeGeneres is what we would call magnetic. She’s someone who attracts the attention of others not just based on how she looks but on who she is. She’s hysterically funny and genuine and down-to-earth and passionate and courageous (how many other celebrities would have “come out” while they had a TV series running, as she did a few years back?). As a result, we’re drawn to her total beauty. And it doesn’t hurt that she’s got great skin, too.
Does the selection of Ellen into the equivalent of the makeup Hall of Fame mean we’ve lost our cultural fascination with the perfect 10 face and figure? Hardly. It’s a momentary blip; we’re still hypnotized by raw physical beauty, especially in women. But it’s a hopeful sign that cosmetics companies, at the very least, are beginning to understand that their customers are by and large real women, not fantasy Barbie dolls, and that it’s OK for their spokeswomen to look real as well.
