I had planned on finishing up another post tonight, but decided this one was more important.

Dove has launched a very important and relevant campaign called #NoLikesNeeded. I can relate to it 100% because I myself have often taken a photo and ended up not posting it because I have worried that I don’t look perfect enough in it, my hair wasn’t quite right in the shot, my skin had a breakout and you can see it under my make-up etc. We’ve all had wobblies like that where our self-confidence was shaky and our fears ended up winning.

Take a moment to read through these stats collected in SA. They are disheartening and scary because I think so many of us women can relate to them – no matter what age we are.

Every day a large percentage of women seek validation by fishing for ‘likes’ on their social media platforms, which creates a substantial amount of personal anxiety. The social reality for many women is that receiving ‘likes’ increases their self-esteem and that the external validation results in a cycle of seeking more ‘likes’ from their peers/followers.

It’s time we all change our thoughts and become more confident, and more importantly, build each other up instead of breaking each other down.

We don’t need validation from followers on social media as to whether we are beautiful. Each and every one of us is uniquely beautiful and I think that is truly something special. This kind of mind shift needs to happen from a very young age, and Dove has created a great site (http://selfesteem.dove.co.za/) with helpful content to help younger girls address their self-confidence issues which have resulted from peer pressure and the ridiculously high standards of what is considered “beautiful” and “like worthy”.

Help spread this message and together we can change the mindset to #NoLikesNeeded.