Only 4 percent of women think they are beautiful?

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

I’m having trouble finding a link for the 2014 study, but Here’s the 2004 study Dove commissioned. The finding about whether women identify as beautiful appears to be based on this methodology:

Study data reveal that “beautiful” is not a word women willingly associate with themselves. In the study, women were given a list consisting only of positive or neutral adjectives to describe their looks (including; “natural,” “average,” “b eautiful,” “sexy” and “gorgeous”) and asked to choose the one they felt most comfortable with.

By an overwhelming majority, women around the world are most comfortable using the words natural (31%) or average (29%) to describe their looks.

Only 2% of women around the world choose beautiful to describe their looks, fewer even than choose “attractive” (9%), “feminine” (8%), “good-looking” (7%) or “cute” (7%).

Analysis reveals that this lack of identification with “beautiful” holds across all age groups, with only 4% of 18-29 year-olds choosing “beautiful” as a word to describe their looks.

(Note that 60% is an “overwhelming majority”).

They go on to say that 40% of women “strongly agree” with feeling discomfort at describing themselves as beautiful, and that the “vast majority” of women consider themselves of average attractiveness, with 13% considering themselves less attractive than average and 16% considering themselves more attractive than average.

So basically, given a list of words, “beautiful” isn’t most womens’ go-to word to describe their appearance. Some women feel uncomfortable describing themselves with that word. And they turn that into “only 4% of women think they are beautiful.”

It’s kind of astonishing that a multinational corporation trying to sell beauty products would distort the results of their research, but there you go.