DOVE
RECLAIMING SCHOOL PICTURE DAY
BRIEF
Dove has a long history of empowering women to embrace their natural beauty and, in doing so, prioritise the self-esteem that comes from loving yourself, just as you are.
But how can you love yourself as you are when individuals, schools, public institutions and places of work are still able to openly and legally discriminate against you because of how you choose to wear your hair?
Dove research has found that black children experience race-based hair discrimination from as early as five years old. Those with afro or textured hair can too often attract unwanted touch, unwelcome remarks, and suffer from fetishisation, microagressions, all the way through to outright racist school and company policies.
Dove is therefore on mission to end race-based hair discrimination and enable women everywhere to embrace their natural beauty. Our brief: shine a light on this little-understood, rarely written about problem, and campaign for its long overdue end.
IDEA
School photo day. The yearly moment when an image is created for perpetuity, something to send to the grandparents and place with pride on the mantelpiece. In a world of Instagram and digital photos, for many the school photo is the only actual real-world physical photo they get taken in an entire year.
Astonishingly, our research found 84% of black and mixed-heritage women with afro or textured hair felt the need to alter their authentic or natural hairstyle for school with an astonishing 28% of them skippin school picture day altogether due to anxiousness around race-based hair discrimination.
We couldn’t believe it. It felt like they’d been robbed, actively deprived of something that every other child in the country takes for complete granted. Memories, stolen.
And so, we located and recruited a cohort of black women that had experienced race-based hair discrimination in their school days. Working with the exceptionally talented director Ron Timehin, we shot a moving film in which eight affected women, share their stories about the long-lasting hold this untold form of racism has had on their lives.
The film sees the women have their school pictures retaken, this time wearing their hair as they have chosen, expressing beauty on their terms and showing up as their most authentic selves. It captures the raw and emotional moment as each woman sees their new school picture for the first time, reclaiming the confidence they didn’t have at school and reinforcing the need for change.
RESULTS
We landed 50+ sizeable pieces of coverage in the UK, across national and broadcast. It started a widespread national debate, online and IRL.
The campaign was cited in the issuance of new government rules for schools in the UK in October 2022, delivered via the Equalities and Human Rights Commission and endorsed by the All Party Parliamentary Group for Race Equality In Education. It states that “pupils should not be stopped from wearing their hair in natural afro styles at school” and that “any existing uniform and appearance policies that ban certain hairstyles, without the possibility for exceptions to be made on racial grounds, are unlawful.”
