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  1. Welcome to Dove
  2. Learn About Dove
  3. Real Beauty Network
  4. Beauty Portraits
  5. Afua Boateng

Afua Boateng, 22

As a young black girl, being surrounded by beauty adverts showing tall, thin, blonde, white women who didn’t look like me gave me a narrow view of what beauty was. It wasn’t just skin colour; it was hair type and body type, too. It took me a good couple of years to realise I wouldn’t look like that, and that that was ok. I would tell my younger self to widen her lens of what is beautiful.

Afua Boateng, 22

I’m a punk musician and I think that by experiencing this world, I’ve seen so many different portrayals of beauty and have come to realise that I don’t want or need to conform to just one. It's taught me that it’s really lame to look like everyone else, unlike what I saw in beauty ads and magazines growing up...which just isn’t realistic. - Afua, 22

Afua Boateng, 22

I’m a punk musician and I think that by experiencing this world, I’ve seen so many different portrayals of beauty and have come to realise that I don’t want or need to conform to just one. It's taught me that it’s really lame to look like everyone else, unlike what I saw in beauty ads and magazines growing up...which just isn’t realistic. - Afua, 22

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@Dove

I play bass in a punk band, and a part of that is that you don’t want to conform. The punk world has taught me you don’t have to look like everyone else. All the musicians I like kind of have a point of not conforming to those beauty standards. I thought it was cool.

Loads of the women in my family have this nose, so it’s an important feature of my face.

I feel beautiful now. I really like my big nose. Loads of the women in my family have this nose, so it’s an important feature of my face. It’s not just any big nose. It feels special.

Explore more

  • Dove Beauty Portrait
    Lily Dean, 23
    I'm 5 feet 2 inches and I’ve always liked being short, because I think it’s cute.
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    Christa, 42
    I wore a wig from when my hair fell out aged seven to when I was 25.
  • Dove Beauty Portrait
    Shakia Stewart, 28
    Being soft has a lot of negative connotations – being a soft touch, being easily malleable, being
  • Dove Beauty Portrait
    Wendy Helm, 52
    My brokenness now makes my beauty, because I can’t hide from it.
  • Dove Beauty Portrait
    Bella Huddart, 52
    I always felt very large for my age: by the time I was twelve I was already nearly six feet tall.
  • Dove Beauty Portrait
    Monica Cummings
    Being a diplomat was about managing perceptions the whole time. ­I wore fairly feminine attire on
  • Beauty Portraits
  • body image

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Hello beautiful

When it comes to your body, love the one you're with

Beauty is an all-ages show

Every body is beautiful

Be your beautiful self

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