The Standard of Beauty

      Susie Orbach's recount of Dove's "Campaign for Real Beauty" truly captures the events of one of the biggest drives for womens' self-worth.  In it, she details the steps that major companies like Dove and its associates take to dispel the belief that beauty comes from certain waist, hip, and chest sizes, as well.  Instead of these afflicted youth simply lacking self-esteem, many of the details truly point to media, advertising, and television as the reasons for this propagated desire for thinness and proper proportions.  Many advertisements and movies use paper thin models to drive home their particular story or product.  As young women see the growing success of these thinner role models and fail to see other, less-advertised women succeed without having attained the same physique, a need to be like the former is instilled within them.  With a socially-"mandatory" goal to work towards, many young girls estimate their success in their social life based on how good they look and how comparable they are to the models that they see in everyday life.  When they nearly kill themselves in order to attain this model-like thinness, and yet still carry a long standing hatred for their bodies, then something is seriously wrong.  This is why Dove and O&M teamed up with other large companies in order to help instill pride in the young girls afflicted with a sense of worthlessness so powerful that they harm their own bodies in order feel success in their lives.  With weeks, days, and hours of study into different cultures, they effectively proved that many of the television programs and advertisements only catered to the insecurities and dreams of women, and that these programs were having a negative effect on the esteem and morale to any woman worldwide that was within eyesight of these programs.  Afterward, they went to form the "Campaign for Real Beauty", hiring Susan Sarandon as one of its poster girls.  As they continue to forge ahead with their campaign, they are still changing the way that beauty is seen by a greater and greater number of people each year.