This is a companion piece to the most recent Ideas Lab on Women’s Football. The beauty industry – alongside fashion and diet culture – has built its fortune on making people feel inadequate about their appearance. The implicit promise is always the same: buy our products and you’ll finally be worthy of love and acceptance. Social media has aggravated this cycle, creating unprecedented levels of body dissatisfaction and self-loathing.

But a counter-revolution is brewing. Here are five campaigns that dare to challenge this toxic narrative, encouraging people to see their unfiltered, unretouched, authentic selves as already beautiful.

Em Ford – You Look Disgusting

Beauty blogger Em Ford’s extraordinarily powerful film exposes the vicious cycle of social media hatred. It’s a devastating indictment of how online spaces have become hunting grounds for body shamers.

Sport England – This Girl Can: Me Again

Five years after the groundbreaking original campaign, “This Girl Can” returned with “Me Again” – encouraging women to reclaim fitness and sport regardless of their shape, size, or ability. This execution celebrates the messy, sweaty, imperfect reality of women’s bodies in motion.

Dove – Real Beauty Sketches

This early masterpiece from Dove’s Real Beauty campaign became one of the most-watched advertising videos ever made. The gulf between self-perception and reality is heartbreaking – and revelatory. Dove was the first major beauty brand to challenge the fundamental premise of its own industry.

Billie – Project Body Hair

In a radical move for a razor brand, Billie created advertising that actually shows body hair—and celebrates it. Revolutionary for daring to show what their product is actually designed to remove.

Movemeant – Own Your #BellyJelly

This joyful campaign takes body positivity even further than “This Girl Can,” explicitly celebrating the parts of our bodies that jiggle, wobble, and move. It’s defiant in its refusal to hide or apologise for bodies that don’t conform to impossibly rigid beauty standards.

Hope is a marketing, creative and branding agency for charities and other social-purpose organisations. The Ideas Lab examines what makes effective (or ineffective) communications for these causes, charities and social-impact businesses.