Dove has been around for ages, right? Everyone had a couple of bars of their soap in the cupboard bought on offer at the supermarket. Through a childish eye, though, they were the brand you hoped your parent brought back from shopping so that you could lather it on in the shower and feel like you were somebody.
At school, Dove represented for many girls this image of beauty- honest beauty. Because, when you put it on your body in the shower, it almost whispered that you are worthy in its creamy consistency and subtle smells of maternal warmth. But the moment you woke up for school the next day, that image of you in your mind had gone, and you put on the foundation and woke up an hour earlier to do your hair because magazines and Instagram told you that was the only way.
But now, Dove is doing more to bring their self-worth to girls' lives even when they step out of the shower. They are uprooting the entire beauty industry. In their new Self-Esteem Project, Dove is educating instead of pressuring, guiding instead of influencing. Aiming to reach ¼ billion young girls, Dove's self-esteem project helps parents and teachers improve self-esteem in young girls. They are a brand that embodies purity, not profit.
Dove has highlighted more than any brand anywhere life is like as a girl growing up fed these false images. Their new advert (shown below) shows the aftermath of a teen uploading an edited picture to social media, reversing it to her sat bare-faced on her bed, thinking God knows what to all of the efforts it requires to get love online. At the end of the video, Dove state: ‘The pressure of social media is hurting our girls’ self-esteem.’ We agree. We need more apps and more changes to social media and the beauty industry to stop this.
It is time we hold our hands up and admit where we went wrong. That’s why we started our app in the first place. Like Dove, we wanted to tackle the fact that 80% of girls by the age of 13 edit themselves online. As a technological world, we are all responsible for this image of perfection-propaganda targeting young, impressionable girls.
Stitcht is an app that takes away this pressure and takes away the opportunity to be anything but yourself. Every person on there is posting videos of themselves in their natural states- post-jog, out walking, in their bed remembering a funny story to tell. We have single-handedly created an environment that people can feel safe in. And we want all young girls like the one in the video to have somewhere to go that actively encourages being real.
It starts with us. Join in and help fix what we started today.
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