How some brands are striving to change our #BodyConfidence and why we really should listen... #ChooseBeautiful

One of the things I have found most interesting about speaking to others with hairloss is just how intrinsically our hair is to our body confidence, and how much it forms of our identity. Along the way, I have met those who embrace (and even covet) a smooth cranium, as well as those who've spent time covering and hiding their hairloss from others, with every variation in between. Indeed in our interview with Brenda, she highlighted the fact she quit her job as a Children's entertainer after improving her own body confidence, identifying the fact that costumes helped her hide an aspect of herself that she previously struggled to deal with.

A few days ago, my colleague Jess pointed me in the direction of a new campaign by Dove called #ChooseBeautiful. Brands are often criticised for 'jumping on bandwagons' and 'preaching', and whilst many choose gimmicky media to solicit sales, every once in a while you start to believe a particular brand has genuinely good intentions alongside those sales. Over the last few years, I believe Dove has become one such brand, underpinning and helping build customers' body confidence through their campaigns.

Over the past few years, Dove UK and US has become synonymous with inspiringly powerful campaigns about self-esteem, body confidence and natural beauty in general. You may for example recognise the Evolution of a Model campaign from a few years back; a time-lapsed video focussing on the reality of ‘beautiful’. (If you haven’t already seen it, watch it below – you might be shocked!)

Now, they have done it once again...
The #ChooseBeautiful campaign comprises a social experiment approach, being more hands on compared to others in the past. The video campaign shows women from around the world being challenged to re-evaluate their own image and choose out of two doors; ‘Average’ and of course ‘Beautiful’.

As you can imagine, many women chose the ‘Average’ door; maybe to avoid judgement for acknowledging their own beauty or for the sheer fact they didn’t think they were beautiful!
Those who did walk through the ‘Beautiful’ door had significantly different body language and even a bit of a happy strut after being empowered by their decision to be ‘beautiful’ with a smile from ear to ear – one young girl was even dragged through the ‘beautiful’ door by her Mum!

Even though this campaign only seems like a bit of fun, shockingly, a huge 96 per cent of women wouldn’t use the word ‘beautiful’ to describe themselves fully; however 80 per cent would use the word to describe something about themselves.

I think this is a great campaign and one that we should all use to focus our own self-assessments. Not to sound twee, but there is beauty in everyone and why would we judge ourselves to be average? Average by definition means something in the middle, based on a numeric value - an 'average' height, an 'average' shoe-size, but how can we possibly be an 'average' beauty when there is no quantifiable aspect to beauty. I am me and that won't change, so if I don't believe myself beautiful, why should anyone else?

Whilst we are on the body confidence issue I looked at other recent examples of brands getting involved in the Body Confidence issue and lingerie brand Curvy Kate has been praised after releasing an ad that took a shot at Victoria’s Secret. ‘The Perfect Body’ advert by Victoria’s Secret was criticised for ‘body shaming’ women who are larger, as the ad consisted of one particular body shape.
The high fashion brand then changed the advert name to ‘The Body for Everybody’ after Curvy Kate released a similar ad using women with a diverse range of shapes and sizes... You go girls!





Coming back onto the Dove #Choose Beautiful campaign, we want to know what door you would choose? We’d love to know, please leave your opinion in the comments below or tweet us!

Watch the video here...

Evolution of a Model Video

Victoria x

www.prettybald.co.uk Twitter: @PrettyBald

#StopThePress Cheryl Fernandez-Versini has a brave?! new haircut... Open letter to the press

#StopThePress, Cheryl Fernandez-Versini has opted for a '70s inspired 'lop' in what's being described as a brave haircut.

Credit to Cheryl, as always she looks gorgeous and her latest hairstyle is as stunning as you'd expect...



What I'd like to take a minute to do is write a post for the wonderful UK Print and Broadcast Media who are describing this move as brave?!?! True, it's an unexpected change, but is that really the same as being brave?

To me, when it comes to hair, brave is...

• the six-year-old girl I met who gets up and goes to school everyday without hair because an under-researched condition made all her hair fall out. Even braver is that she goes with a smile, despite being teased for her lack of locks
• the ten year old lad who shaved all his hair off to support his friend with cancer
• the lady climbing a massive mountain to raise money for AlopeciaUK specifically because she struggled to cope when her own hair fell out through Chemo.

Brave is not shortening your hair by ten inches knowing that even if it goes wrong, it'll still grow back!

Sorry guys, but it's sloppy articles like these where the focus is on the appearance and not on the person, and which link changes to that appearance with an act of courage, that means we have teenagers in this country battling to overcome anxieties about their appearance, with their body confidence at absolute rock bottom! It's articles like these that lead us to define a person by what they look like and not what they can do or achieve! It's exactly why brands like Dove seek to redress the balance with Real Beauty Stories, and Sport England are forced to create an emotive and can-do advert with the hashtag #ThisGirlCan. 

Reading an American article the other day I was dismayed and disappointed to spot that in a survey conducted at the end of last year, 57% of the teenage girls and 44% of the adult women questioned said that their hair defines who they are. Not just contributes to their confidence, but actually defines who they are. Does that somehow mean that because I personally have no hair, I'm somehow worth less or should believe I am worth less than those who have it?

I understand people consume this kind of story and that to an extent it's born from our society attitudes, but come on guys, please opt for a word other than brave! It's a thoughtless and demoralising choice of words for many people and really, you can do better!

Victoria 

www.prettybald.co.uk Twitter: @PrettyBald