The myth buried in Dove's "Beauty and Confidence Report"

Dove recently released a new report on female body confidence that found women and girls lack confidence in their physical appearance, and I’m not surprised.

I’m not surprised, but for reasons you may not think. I’m not surprised because historically, women have been evaluated based on appearance. I’m not surprised because, at least in the United States, we focus more on building up body confidence than we do on building confidence. I’m not surprised because societal institutions and corporations sell women the message that it’s more important to feel beautiful than it is to demand equal rights.

A few months ago, I interviewed some inspiring high school students fighting gender discrimination in their school with the movement, “Not A Distraction." The name of their movement stuck in my mind as I chose to write this piece. These young women challenged their school after being told (continuously) that their clothes—and their bodies—were distractions to male classmates. The school administrators and teachers excused the male classmates’ behavior (“boys-will-be-boys!), communicating to students that our culture of sexism, body policing and sexualization of women exists in school, too.

In the same way these girls were told their bodies were “a distraction,” body positivity advertising and messaging use “beauty” as a distraction from the very real injustices women face. What stuck with me about the Dove survey was not necessarily the way women wanted to see beauty in themselves or change media standards. It was the way that how we feel about our bodies dictates what we do: 7 in 10 girls with low body-esteem say they won't be assertive in their opinion or stick to their decision if they aren't happy with the way they look.

Dove’s solution to this “crisis” is to increase its body positivity and self-esteem efforts for girls, which only further solidifies the enmeshment of our appearance to our abilities. The company runs self-esteem workshops that help girls re-define beauty standards and gain self-confidence.

But what about running workshops that help girls get into politics? Or workshops that focus on how girls can get involved in technology or science? Dove could teach workshops on how to run a business, how to advocate for equal pay and equal rights or how to build up a community that supports gender equality. But instead, our culture focuses on how to re-define beauty and love our bodies but not ourselves.

Dove’s messaging is an incredibly small piece of a much larger issue in the United States, where women and girls are taught that we’re not enough. Women are still paid only 79 cents for every dollar men are paid—and that’s across all industries.  We still don’t have full control over our health decisions and our bodies serve as a political battleground. We have a presidential candidate who regularly demeans and disparages women with words that I refuse to print here.

I’m not asking Dove—or any company—to tackle these issues alone. What I am asking is that we critically examine the messages we receive about women and beauty. We need change, and that change does not happen at a surface level.

We need to fight for the respect that we deserve. We need to stop believing that beauty is more valuable than justice. We need to never stop fighting and never stop challenging the institutions that keep us stuck, wanting to break glass mirrors instead of glass ceilings.