Having spent the last 20 years tackling the toxic body pressures young girls face with its Dove Self-Esteem Project – which won the Stylist Best Beauty Award in 2024 for Best Beauty Campaign of the Year – Dove is now turning its attention to adult women who have grown up surrounded by unrealistic beauty standards for decades.

After conducting the largest research ever done by a beauty brand in 2024, The Real State of Beauty Report, the global study found that millennial women have the lowest body confidence compared to previous generations. As a result, millennial women are over-indexing on health conditions linked to body image.

The research also found that 1 in 3 women would give up a year of their life for what they consider the ‘perfect’ body and 69% admitted to not attending social engagements because of low body confidence.

While the statistics are saddening, they’re not wholly shocking. It’s why we launched Stylist’s Love Women campaign to highlight and tackle the discrepancy between the real women we see in the mirror and in our day-to-day lives and the ‘perfect’ version of women we see represented in the media.

In response to its findings, Dove has launched its first Dove Self-Esteem Project for Women, a first-of-its-kind body confidence program with science-backed content. The online resource aims to help women “unlearn the body hate that has come from decades of societal expectations and toxic beauty standards,” and instead begin a journey towards body confidence.

Through an online video and a free-to-download activity workbook, the program helps women to reflect on their relationship with their body, discover the costs of chasing unattainable beauty standards and create new habits that increase body confidence.

Marcela Melero, chief growth officer of Dove Personal Care North America and Dove Masterbrand, says: “For 20 years Dove has equipped young people with resources to improve their self-esteem and body confidence, and now we’re expanding our focus to women, many who have grown up under the weight of unrealistic beauty standards reinforced by social media.

“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.”

More than 2 in 3 women don't attend social engagements because of low body confidence, new research finds