Evolution

But the fact is we’re surrounded by images that are pretty different from reality – and you wanted to know the truth: 75% of women globally told us they wanted to see a more accurate portrayal of beauty in the media. 

A study we did in 2010 told us that only 4% of women globally  around the world would describe themselves as beautiful. Just four percent. Since we’re committed to getting every single woman body confident and feeling beautiful, we wanted to show women everywhere that what we see in magazines and on TV isn’t real life. It’s as far from real as you can get. 

So in 2006 we released Evolution, a striking Dove video that uncovered the truth behind those images. It shows a woman (the lovely Stephanie Betts) make-up free and ordinary, and a time-lapse video of her evolution into a ‘supermodel’. She spends hours on set, having make-up applied and her hair bulked up and styled – and she’s still not done. The glammed-up version of Stephanie is then loaded into Photoshop – where the real changes start to take place.

Her neck is lengthened, her shoulders are adjusted, her hair and skin smoothed out and perfected, and her eyes and mouth are pumped up considerably. The finished result? A completely unrecognizable Stephanie. And, of course, the realization that the beauty we see in the media is a myth.

Evolution helped us encourage positive body image in women everywhere by exposing the truth behind the media’s magic tricks and showing them that our perception of beauty is distorted. 

So how much work goes into creating an image in the media? A lot.