What is beauty?

Dove soap has a new campaign where they show a video of a woman is made ready for what appears to be a typical ad campaign. She is a woman who is beautiful before they even begin working on her - a natural beauty by most standards.

But then they begin to change her to match what our society now believes is beautiful. They put a team of make-up artists and hair stylists to work on her and then take some of the windblown glamor shots we're used to seeing.

But they don't stop there.

The computer artists take the photos and begin to change her features...bigger eyes...a longer neck...a thinner face...no blemishes. When they're done, we see the type of woman who we often see on the cover of the fashion magazines. She is no longer the natural beauty. Even she doesn't look like herself..

Imagine what this kind of digital magic is doing for the self-esteem for women of all ages?

We're comparing our looks to the pictures of women who don't even look like that themselves. Cindy Crawford was once heard to say she wished she looked like Cindy Crawford. Oprah Winfrey says it takes a team and a day to get the cover picture of "O Magazine."

Let's give ourselves a break...let's start to think about what true beauty is. We each have much more of that than we realize...

Haven't seen the Dove video...check the link above.

More on this later...