On April 10, to mark 20 years of its “Campaign for Real Beauty,” Dove conducted a sweeping study of beauty around the world to understand how beauty impacts women and girls today. While there has been some positive change, the state of beauty in 2024 isn’t pretty, according to the company.

The outsized value society placed on appearance has intensified the pressure to be a certain type of beautiful. In its 2024 global report, Dove found two in five women would give up a year of their life to achieve an ideal look or body. The study shows that while beauty ideals have diversified over the years, the checklist is growing and impossible to meet – from looking healthy (79%) to also being slim (71%), having a small waist (66%) while also being curvy (55%). Two in three women believe that women today are expected to be more physically attractive than their mother's generation was.

One of the biggest threats to the representation of real beauty is artificial intelligence (AI), according to Dove. Today, almost 9 in 10 women and girls say they have been exposed to harmful beauty content online: nearly half have felt pressure to alter their appearance because of what they see online, even when they know it’s fake or AI- generated.

AI is perpetuating unrealistic beauty standards and lacking representation further through the content it is creating. Today, women and girls overwhelmingly agree that real beauty means being authentic, who you are, and embracing flaws, according to Dove. Dove intends to accelerate its efforts to champion transparency and diversity and take action to shatter beauty stereotypes in new and emerging media. The company also committed to never using AI to represent real women in its ads.

To help set new digital standards of representation, Dove will create the Real Beauty Prompt Guidelines, easy-to-use guidance for everyone on how to create images that are representative of real beauty on the most popular generative AI programs.

To download “The Real State of Beauty: A Global Report,” click here

To download Dove’s AI playbook (72-page pdf), click here

To  download an infographic with highlights from “The Real State of Beauty,” click here