:format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/47397690/dove-no-likes-needed-ciara.0.0.png)
Racked is no longer publishing. Thank you to everyone who read our work over the years. The archives will remain available here; for new stories, head over to Vox.com, where our staff is covering consumer culture for The Goods by Vox. You can also see what we’re up to by signing up here.
If the hashtag #NoLikesNeeded starts to show up on selfies in your Instagram feed, then Dove's plan is working. The beauty brand's UK division just unveiled a new campaign as part of its ongoing Self-Esteem Project, The Telegraph reports. As part of the campaign, Dove recruited bloggers to upload selfies tagged with #NoLikesNeeded, while others posted blog entries about their own struggles with confidence in the age of social media.
Although the tag says no likes needed, the top Instagram post so far for Dove's campaign is by YouTuber Estée Lalonde. Her post got 31,500 likes, as well as comments along the lines of "You are so pretty!"
The video for #NoLikesNeeded explains the inspiration behind the tag. "More than 100,000 girls in the UK have low body confidence. Six in 10 girls are telling us they feel prettier online than in real life," the Dove video declares, along with the assertion that girls are chasing likes online to feel better about themselves. The video ends with the tagline: "Join us and help girls see that the only like that counts is their own."
According to The Telegraph, Dove's research suggests that girls with low body confidence are twice as likely to feel bad about themselves if they don’t get likes for their photos online. Dove also found that women who are 18 to 23 years old want three times more likes on social media than girls who are 13 to 17 years old.
"Today’s research enables us to better understand the relationship between social media and girls’ self-esteem, and the importance of talking to girls about body confidence before they turn 18," Dove UK brand director Lucy Attley told The Telegraph. Dove has clearly turned its attention to helping shape teenage girls' perception of themselves. The brand launched another video this past month that promoted young girls' self-esteem.