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Do you feel passionate about the self-esteem of your child? If so, please share your thoughts with the Dove Self-Esteem Project (DSEP) – and you could win a £200 voucher - NOW CLOSED

2 replies

AnnMumsnet · 30/05/2013 15:41

The folks at Dove would love to hear your thoughts on their new Self-Esteem Project and the launch of their new online space packed full of resources, specifically designed to help parents build their girls' body confidence and self-esteem.

The new website is here: selfesteem.dove.co.uk/

Dove say, "Do you notice your daughter comparing her looks to others? While this is a normal part of adolescence, it can also be a slippery road for her self-confidence."

"Our ambition is for beauty to be a source of confidence, not anxiety. The DSEP was founded in 2004 to ensure the next generation of women grows up to be happy and content, free from misconstrued beauty stereotypes and the burden of self-doubt."

"Dove's aim is to improve the self-esteem of over 15 million young people by 2015. It is well on the way, having reached more than 11 million so far, but there are lots more girls to reach. And with more than half (54%) of girls citing their mothers as their primary role model*, Mumsnet is working with the DSEP to give mums the information they need to help raise their children's body confidence".

"In addition, Dove has also been doing a lot of work directly with schools - the DSEP made a donation of £250,000 to Beat (Beating Eating Disorders) to deliver free self-esteem workshops for 11-14 year old school children. Already, 152,175 lives have been reached and Dove wants to reach thousands more this year, so get your school to book a free workshop now by visiting www.dove.co.uk/en/".

School student, 14 year old Emily, shares her views on the workshops: "My view of beauty has changed massively - I now realise that nobody's perfect and everyone has flaws"

So have a look and let Dove - on this thread - know what you think. They are finalising the website now and want to use your feedback to help make it better. Please note your comments may be used to help shape future edits of the site and the programme.

Please state the age of your DD(s) when you respond.

~ What's your general feedback - is it user friendly? Is it helpful? What is good about the site, what's appealing to you/ your DD? Is it something you think you'd use? If so, how? If not why not? What's missing? What self-esteem issue do you think is not covered so well?

~ On the activities which are on this site, including (but not limited to) My Mosaic and Retouch Roulette - what are your favourite/ least favourite activities - and why? All activities can be viewed on the website.

~ Generally talking about self-esteem and girls - how - if at all - has this affected your DD? How do you and your family deal with it? What age did any issues start? Do you think the website would help your DD?

~ Parents of boys: whilst the DSEP focuses primarily on girls, it understands that boys are also affected by self-esteem issues. The DSEP will be working on dedicated materials for boys so Dove would love to hear your thoughts on how boys are affected by self-esteem or body image issues.

All comments welcome.

Add your feedback on this thread and you'll be entered into a prize draw where one MNer will win a £200 voucher to spend at www.experiencedays.co.uk

Thanks
MNHQ

  • Source: Real Truth About Beauty Revisited - Dove Global Study 2010 Please note your comments on this thread may be used by Dove elsewhere.
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MNHQ

AnnMumsnet · 31/05/2013 11:26

Hello - thanks for all the comments so far - Dove welcome all feedback and it will all be noted by them. They are looking into the slowness of the site some of you have reported.

In response to the Facebook ads issue they have asked me to pass on the following statement to you.

Stacie Bright, Global Director, Marketing Communications for Dove says "We have been actively working with Facebook over the past few days to address the issue of gender-based hate-speech, and we welcome Facebook's commitment to take additional measures to tackle the problem. Dove takes this issue very seriously and does not condone any activity that intentionally insults any audience. We have heard and share the concerns and remain committed to creating a world where beauty is a source of confidence, not anxiety."

MNHQ

HelenMumsnet · 07/06/2013 11:12

Morning. And many thanks to everyone who has taken the time to post on this thread and to look at the Dove Self-Esteem Project (DSEP) website.

Apologies for the delay in responding to those of you who had raised some critical points. We weren't ignoring you - we always welcome feedback, as we hope you all know; we've been talking to the Dove team about those particular points and they've been listening to us.

Dove are very keen to invite some of those who've criticised them most strongly on this thread to come along and see some of their work in action. We'll be contacting some of you off-board about this but do please post on this thread, too, if that's something you'd be interested in doing.

Here, also, is Dove's response to the main points of criticism that have been raised...

"Thank you to everyone for sharing your thoughts on the Dove Self-Esteem Project and the website we are developing. We really appreciate your time and feedback, and we welcome your views on how we can improve it. We'll certainly be taking what you have said on board, so we can make it a better and more valuable resource.

"We also take seriously the comments raised by some of you about the wider Dove Real Beauty campaigns - and we'd like to try to address them here.

"Firstly though, the issue of Facebook advertising: as we posted on Friday, we have actively worked with Facebook to address the issue of gender-based hate-speech, and we welcome Facebook's commitment to take additional measures to tackle the problem. Dove takes this issue very seriously and does not condone any activity that intentionally insults any audience. We have heard, and share, the concerns and remain committed to creating a world where beauty is a source of confidence, not anxiety. We assure you that we will continue to carefully review and revisit our advertising and marketing decisions.

"Some of you have also raised the issue of us being part of the same company (Unilever) as Lynx. We do operate as entirely separate brands and those brands obviously have very different target audiences. But we do want to make it clear that Lynx's advertising is designed to be tongue in cheek - in a way that very much aims to make both men and women laugh. Nonetheless, we will certainly share your comments with the team at Lynx.

"Yes, we do sell skin lightening products in Asia. They are used by women to even out their natural skin tone, reduce the appearance of spots, and protect their skin from the sun. We think they are comparable with the self-tanning products we sell in Europe and North America, where women use them to darken and even out their natural skin tone.

"Talking specifically about Dove and our Self-Esteem Project, we absolutely hear your feedback that we need to show far more diversity in our campaigns, and we assure you that we are listening and will address this. Over the eight years since we launched our Campaign for Real Beauty, we have featured older women, less able-bodied women and women from a range of ethnicities but we agree that we can do more, and do better. We also take on board your comments about including boys - as stated in the OP, the DSEP will be working on dedicated materials for boys, so this feedback is very valuable to us.

"We do truly believe that, as a beauty brand, helping women and girls feel better about their bodies is something we can do credibly. We are hugely passionate about it and we believe that widening the definition of beauty in society and taking action to promote better body confidence is something we are well placed to do.

"We've conducted vast research into how feeling bad about how the way you look can impact young people's lives in a negative way ? for example, we know that 53% of British girls avoid certain activities because of how they feel about the way they look. It's this sort of statistic that drives the work of the Dove Self-Esteem Project; we want to help improve this picture. We feel strongly that a better sense of body-related self-esteem can help people realise their full potential.

"The DSEP is completely separate to our commercial business of selling products; we never push our brand or any products in schools, and the DSEP certainly isn't about trying to market to young people. Over the last eight years, we have worked in partnership with Beat (the Beating Eating Disorders charity) to help create materials and resources that aim to help young people feel better about their own bodies. It is Beat who conduct the self-esteem workshops, funded by the DSEP, in schools. Any Mumsnetter is welcome to contact us to find out more about these workshops and how they are run.

"We know not everyone will agree with what we are doing but we genuinely believe that a beauty company can help work towards creating a wider, more inclusive definition of beauty in society."

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