Brigid Brockway is Technically a Writer: You're not hideous at all! I swear!

I'll admit it, I shed a few tears over the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty at first. The whole thing where they take a clearly hideous woman

Ugh... look at her... with her perfectly symmetrical face and
flawless cheek bones and... 2 zits. I feel like I need a shower.

and Photoshopped her into a plastic blow up doll

If only Photoshop could smooth away dead-behind-the-eyes

The scales started falling off my eyes (speaking of things that should be Photoshopped out) when Dove assured me that if I used their deodorant, I need no longer live in shame over my apparently abhorrent armpits. All the more humiliating was the fact that I didn't even know I was supposed to be ashamed of them in the first place.
That's when I noticed that the Dove ads weren't quite what they'd seemed at first. Take this ad...

These gorgeous women who were paid to pose in their underwear for pictures
that will be used in an ad campaign are definitely not models.

Notice something these ladies have in common? All of these ladies lack a few things that even real beauties tend to have... like cellulite. Stretch marks. Scars. Muffin tops. Body hair. To name a few. What they have in common is that they look better in their underwear than pretty much every real beauty I know. Dove, you are my hero. You have widened the margins of real beauty by maybe a millimeter. And there was much rejoicing in the kingdom.
Dove didn't stop at our armpits. It kept forgiving us for more and more things we didn't know we were supposed to be ashamed of. Like this monster.

Holy god - what a heifer. I bet she has to special-order her size ten
dresses. And those boobs? Everyone knows large breasts are
repugnant. At least her armpits are presentable.

Finally, a soap that tells me it's okay to be Irish!
(I mean, besides Irish Spring)

Wait, is this seriously a thing?

What? It's okay to age (a tiny bit) now?
Dove may be taking this "allowed to look like a human being"
thing a little too far. This woman should have to wear a bag
over her head when she leaves the house.

Obviously, it's not Dove's job to actually celebrate real beauty. It's Dove's job to sell me soap, and it is doing that job extremely well. I sincerely hope whoever came up with this campaign with one hell of a promotion - where we once thought of Dove soap as "that stuff that smells like grandmas" we now see it as "that stuff that's making the world a better place for women."
And hell, maybe it is doing more good than harm, after all. Maybe I'm alone in looking at these ads and seeing myself even more hideous than I did before.
But maybe Dove has found a new way to perpetuate the notion cosmetic companies have been perpetuating since women were smearing bird crap* on their face. The notion that our entire worth is determined by how we look.
Well, I've decided to do something about it. I'm starting my own campaign for real beauty... starring me. Suck it, soap.