Real women on real beauty: Self-discrepancy, internalization of the thin ideal, and perceptions of attractiveness and thinness in Dove's Campaign for Real Beauty

This experiment tested the effectiveness of manipulated images of a Dove model, of varying shapes and sizes, to assess how or if exposure to an average or plus-size model would decrease women’s short-term internalisation of body image ideals.

Real women on real beauty: self-discrepancy, internalization of the thin ideal, and perceptions of attractiveness and thinness in Dove's Campaign for Real Beauty

Kimberly Bissell

University of Alabama

Amy Rask

Media Research Lab

Introduction

Research in the area of body image distortion suggests the media are one of many potential variables related to increases in disordered eating, especially in college and adolescent female women. The media are often held partially responsible for young females’ desire to be extraordinarily thin because of the number of media messages promoting the ‘thin ideal’. The general conclusion among researchers is that exposure to thinness-depicting...

Not a subscriber?

Schedule your live demo with our team today

WARC helps you to plan, create and deliver more effective marketing

  • Prove your case and back-up your idea

  • Get expert guidance on strategic challenges

  • Tackle current and emerging marketing themes

We’re long-term subscribers to WARC and it’s a tool we use extensively. We use it to source case studies and best practice for the purposes of internal training, as well as for putting persuasive cases to clients. In compiling a recent case for long-term, sustained investment in brand, we were able to support key marketing principles with numerous case studies sourced from WARC. It helped bring what could have been a relatively dry deck to life with recognisable brand successes from across a broad number of categories. It’s incredibly efficient to have such a wealth of insight in one place.

Insights Team
Bray Leino

You’re in good company

We work with 80% of Forbes' most valuable brands* and 80% of the world's top top-of-the-class agencies.

* Top 10 brands