# Only 4 percent of women think they are beautiful?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/only-4-percent-of-women-think-they-are-beautiful/828271>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [January 23, 2019, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/only-4-percent-of-women-think-they-are-beautiful/828271 "2019-01-23T15:32:39Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
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**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\
**Post date:** [January 25, 2019, 6:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/only-4-percent-of-women-think-they-are-beautiful/828271/55 "2019-01-25T18:41:35Z")

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I’m having trouble finding a link for the 2014 study, but [Here’s the 2004 study](http://www.clubofamsterdam.com/contentarticles/52%20Beauty/dove_white_paper_final.pdf) 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.

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