How do you see yourself?

23rd April 2013

By Lou Shackleton

One of the things that I have been struggling with is liking myself, and being kind to myself. It’s a topic I first introduced here and I don’t feel I’ve finished exploring it yet. Then I came across this recent campaign by Dove; the video started going the rounds last week and has now racked up over 21.5 million watches (accurate at the time of writing). If you haven’t seen it, the first thing to do is take a look and take a moment to register your own reaction:

What do you think?

Seemingly there has been a mixed reaction to the campaign; the comment thread on the Dove site for the campaign makes interesting reading. There’s also a version with men instead of women:

OK – I tricked you a little with that one – it definitely made me giggle!

Behind the original version and the parody, there is actually a serious point. Research shows that young women tend to think of themselves as worse-looking than they really are, while young men tend to think of themselves as better looking than they really are (though maybe not to the extent shown in the parody).

This is not a new study; it goes all the way back to 2003 (see the Guardian link below for the full details) and actually we replicated the results in my Psychology class during my degree. That’s 10 years ago. The question is, has anything really changed since then? I’m still working out how to like myself (most days) and feel confident in me as a whole person, including all the different dimensions of me and the complexity that brings. I do find that Simon’s words still help me when I’m having a bad day – “It’s not about me, it’s about us.”
It's not about me, it's about us