Would you be willing to give up a year of your life for beauty? Exploring girls' perceptions of beauty globally · ICGS Research Library

Title

Would you be willing to give up a year of your life for beauty? Exploring girls' perceptions of beauty globally

Author

Dove

Year Published

2024

Description

Twenty years ago, global personal-care brand Dove launched the Campaign for Real Beauty . The motivation behind this campaign was to improve girls’ and women’s wellbeing, change the way women are represented in the media, and encourage the media, beauty industry and society to realise how harmful unrealistic expectations about appearance can be to adolescent girls and women. Dove made significant gains in this area, most notably by helping girls and women to learn to love their true beauty regardless of the unrealistic messages they received (Dove, 2024). But 2024 has brought with it many new challenges, including AI. Sadly, this has resulted in a significant change in girls’ perceptions of beauty globally. For girls’ schools this is a very real issue, with the day-to-day impact of girls’ wellbeing and self-esteem in relation to body image being an ongoing challenge for schools and families.

Each year since the launch of the Campaign for Real Beauty , Dove has developed a report to provide an update on girls’ perceptions of beauty, their wellbeing, and how the media, society and beauty industry are engaging with body confidence, self-esteem and representations of beauty (Boechat & Diedrichs, 2024, p. 5). The research for this year’s report included an online survey and interviews. Interviews were conducted with over 33,000 people from “Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, KSA, Mexico, the Netherlands, the Philippines, South Africa, Sweden, Turkey, the USA, and the UK” (Boechat & Diedrichs, 2024). The 2024 report shows the significant impact digital technologies have had on girls’ engagement with beauty. One of the most significant challenges that has now developed is also discussed: AI, including generative AI and the impact of AI generated images online.

Globally, nearly two in every five women would be willing to “give up a year of their life to achieve their beauty ideals” (Boechat & Diedrichs, 2024, p. 9). In fact, one in every five would go so far as to give up five years of their life to achieve false definitions of beauty (Boechat & Diedrichs, 2024, p. 17). When Dove compared the results from this report to their initial report 20 years ago, they also found that twice as many women are now “willing to sacrifice their intelligence for beauty” (Dove, 2024). This shows there is an overwhelming need to challenge unrealistic representations of beauty and support girls and women as they negotiate their own perceptions of beauty, self-compassion and body esteem. This is even more vital when the impact of social media, digital technologies and AI generated images are considered.

Unrealistic perceptions of ideal beauty are a major part of this challenge. Numerous ideal beauty “requirements” exist globally, yet they are impossible to achieve (Unilever, 2024). This includes the need to simultaneously be slim, thin, look healthy, look young, and have a small waist while also having curves. Sadly, this is compounded by the beliefs of nearly 50 per cent of young girls, who feel there is no excuse “not to be beautiful” (Boechat & Diedrichs, 2024, p. 39). These idealised physical traits that are flooding digital media are having a severe impact on girls and young women who say they would be willing to give up good grades at school if they could look beautiful, and would readily sacrifice their dream careers if they could achieve this apparent ideal beauty status (Boechat & Diedrichs, 2024, p. 17). Dove’s report suggests that these challenges, particularly unrealistic beauty standards, are being perpetuated by AI and AI generated images. Even when girls and women know that images are altered or generated by AI, they still feel pressure to alter their own appearance in response to the idealised perfection represented in the images they are viewing online (Boechat & Diedrichs, 2024).

Dove’s report highlights areas of this challenge where intervention may be useful, and is actively working in the AI and beauty media space to positively enact change. This includes a commitment to use real images rather than AI generated (generative AI) images, and the development of a free online tool “to help create visual content that widens the representation of beauty on the most popular generative AI tools” (Unilever, 2024). The researchers who developed Dove’s latest report suggest that the provision of “resources to support body esteem at every life stage” can empower girls and help them develop “resilience to confidently challenge beauty standards, advocate for themselves, and feel connected to and grateful for their bodies” (Boechat & Diedrichs, 2024, p. 4).

Interventions including body image programmes are encouraged, and have already been shown to be successful in case studies (Alliance of Girls’ Schools Australasia, 2023; International Coalition of Girls’ Schools, 2024). It is also important that girls are provided with opportunities to form their own defin