Dove soap bar, Author Felipe Micaroni Lalli (Dove.jpg micaroni@gmail.com) (CC BY-SA 2.5 Generic)
Dove soap, a Unilever brand, has launched a campaign in Canada to highlight the extent to which social media harms the self-esteem of pre-teen girls [1A][2A].
The campaign derives from a survey which showed that 80% of young girls already by the age of 13 use photo editing filters or apps to improve their image before posting a “selfie” online [1B].
Instructions in Parenting
The soap company urges parents to “have the selfie talk” with their children, and explain how image manipulation creates unrealistic beauty standards [1C][2B].
How low have we sunk when a soap company must instruct us in parenting? And how likely is it that our children will do as we say, rather than as we, ourselves, do? Continue reading