Dove invites women to let go of unrealistic beauty standards in 2025

Personal care brand Dove has launched a campaign to encourage women around the world to ditch unrealistic beauty standards when setting New Year's resolutions. 

Titled #NewYearsUnresolution, participants are invited to write a resolution on a sticky note and tear it up, or use a digital sticky note on TikTok to share their pledge with their community. Many ambassadors have taken part in the campaign, including British TikTok influencer Imogen Horton. She begins the video by writing "no more wrinkles" on a sticky note, highlighting just one of the societal beauty standards some women feel pressured to fulfill. 

However, she then rips up the note, signifying her dedication to Dove's #NewYearsUnresolution campaign. 

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"My 2025 New Year's Un-Resolution is to give myself positive affirmations every day, and really believe them," Horton said in her video. 

"Many women set New Year's resolutions to change their bodies, but they're often unfulfilling goals driven by society's narrow beauty standards. They shift our attention from what truly matters," said professor Phillippa Diedrichs, a body image expert at the Centre of Appearance Research at the University of West England.

She added, "Dove has been a trailblazer in redefining real beauty and this new content series is a powerful invitation for millennial women to break this cycle and redefine their relationship with their bodies". 

Dove also released a short film on Youtube to highlight the campaign. The 90-second clip followed a woman celebrating various aspects of her life freely from her point of view. Dove aims to show women around the world that they too can celebrate the joys of life without fixating on unrealistic beauty ideals. 

In addition, the brand has launched "The Dove Self-Esteem Project for Women", an online learning experience designed to help women reflect, reset, and take control of how they engage with the idea of beauty. With this, Dove released the first Dove Self-Esteem Project tool for women, the "Dove Real Beauty Talks", developed with body image experts and informed by academically validated methodologies.

The science-backed content is aimed to focus on commitments to un-do, un-learn, and reject harmful beauty ideals. The online program explores four core topics discussing body confidence and image pressures. 

"Through Dove's first-ever body confidence series for women, our aim is to support women in rejecting unattainable ideals, embrace authenticity, and redefine beauty on their own terms," said Marcela Melero, chief growth officer of Dove Personal Care North America and Dove Masterbrand.

The campaign follows research conducted by Dove in 2024, which found that millennial women have the lowest body confidence compared to previous generations and as a result are over indexing on health conditions linked to body image. 

The research also found one in three women would give up a year of their life for the 'perfect' body and 69% admit to not attending social engagements because of low body confidence.

MARKETING-INTERACTIVE has reached out to Dove for more information. 

Dove is no stranger to empowering campaigns. In April last year, the brand combatted underarm shaming and elevating women's confidence in the Philippines with its "Raise your arms" initiative. 

The campaign celebrates the courage of women who have raised their arms for change, impacting their communities and the broader society. It was set to be executed across multiple channels including outdoor posters and a digital presence on social media platforms.

Using the hashtag #freethepits, Dove encouraged women of all ages in the Philippines to join the movement and share their own moments of bravery and confidence. 

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