71% of women want to see beauty brands promoting body positivity

New research by The Pull Agency, a creative agency specialising in healthcare and beauty brands, has found that 71% of women and 57% of people overall in the UK want to see health and beauty brands promote body positivity.

Body positivity was ranked the number one area where women want to see brands taking action, beating climate change and LGBTQ+ equality.

74% of UK women and 71% of UK consumers overall believe that health and beauty brands should promote body positivity by using models of all shapes, colours, ages, sizes, abilities and being more reflective of the actual people who are buying the products.

Proving the demand for this representation, just 5% of women surveyed said that they want brands to use attractive models that they can aspire to. 

A quarter of Gen Z consumers say that they feel left out of beauty ads, which further evidences the need for body positivity and representation to be promoted by health and beauty brands.

When looking at brands that have done a particularly good job at promoting body positivity and celebrating real rather than idealised female bodies, Dove was the most popular brand amongst respondents.

Dove had three times as many mentions about celebrating diversity and body positivity than any other brand, with Boots and L’Oreal coming in at second and third.

More than half (59%) of UK consumers said that they believe that everyone should be proud of their appearance, however they look, and that people should never think judgementally about others based on their body shape or size.

Interestingly, amongst older consumers aged 55 and above, views on this altered slightly.

The concepts that ‘some people are more attractive than others and that can’t be changed by positive thinking’ and ‘it’s only human to judge people’s appearance, but it’s not something you should do aloud’ were opinions viewed most commonly by consumers aged 55 and older.

Kathrin Rodriguez-Bruessau, head of brand strategy at The Pull Agency said, “Body positivity has become a mainstream issue for the health & beauty sector in recent years. As a result, there’s been a backlash against the traditional use of ‘unrealistically perfect’ models in favour of showing diversity in a more natural way that’s reflective of real people.”

She added, “Consumers don’t want to see photoshopped models or that brands are ‘ticking the box’ to show every subgroup of society. We believe that’s only going to get stronger as time goes on and brands will need to change their marketing strategies accordingly.”

This new research showing the high demand for body positivity in beauty branding follows some debate around the supposed issue of brands becoming too woke when promoting social issues.

Do you think beauty brands need to do more to promote body positivity? Let us know in the comments…