Summer of Dove

This isn't the first time that we've had a body reality check in the mainstream media. In 2002, More magazine ran a ground-breaking photo shoot with actress Jamie Lee Curtis. Intending to show how little celebrities resemble their glossy images, Curtis, then 43, who was known for her enviable figure, posed without makeup, in unglamorous underwear. Even though the article won acclaim from readers, there hasn't been much promotion of the natural look since then. But Dove, which is a division of Unilever, may have tapped into the same voyeuristic vein that has made reality-TV shows so popular. Even if the ads prompt a few "yikes!" these real women are almost impossible to ignore.

Dove's O'Brien won't comment on the criticism, preferring to draw attention to the flood of grateful calls and e-mails the company has gotten from people who love the real beauty campaign. The company is "walking the talk," she says, and she points to the company's Web site, which hosts discussions about beauty and the company's partnership with the Girl Scouts of the USA's "Uniquely ME!" self-esteem boosting program for girls ages 8 to 17. (Traffic on their Web site has gone from 400 to 4,000 hits a day.)

O'Brien did acknowledge that using unglitzy photos of robust women (whom they recruited after months of scouting the stores and streets of America), was a concept that took some getting used to even among Unilever's staff. "Whenever you have a new idea that seems to be breakthrough, there are people that feel uncomfortable," O'Brien explains. "But sometimes we decide it's the ideas that make us uncomfortable are the ones we should pursue."

Dove says that it created its campaign in response to the results of their 2004 "Real Truth About Beauty" study of women's attitudes toward body image. Commissioned by Unilever in conjunction with researchers from Harvard University and the London School of Economics, the study interviewed 3,200 women ages 18-64 in 10 countries. Only 2 percent of the women they talked to considered themselves "beautiful" and only 13 percent were "very satisfied" with their body weight and shape. "This campaign is rooted in good consumer insight," says O'Brien. "It's what women have been asking for a long time because they are so dissatisfied with the way that [they] are portrayed in the media today."

Kearney-Cooke says that pervasive, unrealistic images of women's bodies may be more than a mental-health problem--they may also be contributing to America's costly obesity problem. "When you have this norm that only 2 to 5 percent of the population can obtain, you're setting up young girls to engage in dangerous yo-yo dieting which, over time, increases the risk of becoming overweight." Kearney-Cooke says that young women do look to magazines to form their self-image and that three quarters of normal-weight teen girls believe they are overweight. (Interestingly, while the Dove study found that 60 percent of the American women they spoke to perceived their weight to be "too high," the real number of American women who are actually obese or overweight is a similar 62 percent. The study, however, did not demonstrate whether the women who are truly overweight are among those who feel overweight.)

Whether they are improving female self esteem or not, Dove might have found a great marketing niche. The campaign got a huge amount of attention in the U.K., where it launched last fall. "It was extremely successful--good enough that we couldn't wait for it to come to the United States," says O'Brien. Dove won't reveal exactly how much the ads have helped their bottom line, but O'Brien did say that the campaign has been beneficial for all their products, not just the firming creams. "We've seen our bar-soap share increase one point per month for the past five months so, yes, we are extremely pleased," she adds.