We women are awful to ourselves. A man sees an attractive woman walk by and instinctively thinks about sex. A woman sees another woman walk by and she automatically compares herself to the other, often in a negative way -- who is prettier, slimmer, has nicer hair, has better fashion sense? We can usually find something "wrong" with the other woman to make ourselves feel better -- she has a little roll of skin hanging over the top of her low-cut pants, her teeth are crooked, her roots are showing. This negative self-comparison is especially true when looking at pictures of celebrities or models, but it's harder to find the compensating imperfections in the professional photos (that's why the National Enquirer and other checkout line tabloids are so popular - they show you what the celebs look like when they are being "real people" without makeup and airbrushes).



And this is why I'm fascinated by the latest entry in the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty, a short time-lapse film that shows the transformation of a somewhat plain everywoman to a gorgeous billboard model through makeup and Photoshop. I've watched it several times and find it reassuring to be reminded that the manufactured images of perfect beauty that surround us are not real -- we cannot and should not compare ourselves to those pictures.

And beauty is such a cultural construct. The Dove campaign in China is quite different than in the US. Compare the women on this billboard in Shanghai (as photographed by Brian Sack of the humor site the Banterist, whose series of China travelogue posts was gut-bustingly funny and worth checking out)...


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