Nudging people towards inclusivity
This reading reminded me of a number of movements mainly focused on female beauty - body positivity, anti-shaving, black/brown is beautiful - all aimed at combating traditional western ideals of beauty. These movements are slow to gain traction at first, because they run so counter to the engrained perspectives that the ideal woman is tall, thin, fair, and hairless from the neck down. Focusing on body positivity, this is something that is engrained in girls since they are young, flooding our culture with Disney princesses and barbie dolls that have perfect hourglass figures and are described as beautiful. Therefore, how does the movement become powerful enough that we get a princess like Moana, who has a waist proportional to the rest of her body?
These movements are slow at first, and we have to use nudges to slow down peopleâs thinking - why do we value this? Should we be valuing this? Diet pills, fad diets, and programs like weight watchers have always relied on their aspirational nature (become thin like Jane Fonda or like Britney!) in order to acquire customers, so creating a body positivity movement can gain traction by being similarly aspirational. For example, the rise of plus-sized models, celebrities, and influencers highlights that every body can be beautiful, and that it is enough to be comfortable in oneâs own skin without wanting to change things. Similarly, Dark is Beautiful and WOW used Nandita Das to promote their campaign, giving women a role model who could provide a different type of aspiration.
Secondly, companies can get into customerâs heads by vilifying the original standard of beauty and changing their cognitive association with it - not only is black beautiful, are all bodies beautiful, but people who try to lose weight or lighten their skin are portrayed as misguided sell-outs, or worse: bad people. This one can be tricky and can create a lot of backlash, as some potential customers may feel that their identity is under attack. In general, I donât love negative or antagonistic advertisement (this includes smear ads during elections) as I think it distances customers rather than brings them in. Itâs almost as if Sloan tried to attract MBA students from Booth by highlighting how much windier and colder the Chicago winters are, or by hating on deep dish pizza, rather than highlighting all of MIT and Bostonâs perks. Instead of telling a customer why they should NOT purchase another product, we can change customersâ cognitive associations over time by slowing down their thinking and forcing them to critically evaluate where their blind spots are coming from.
Lastly, in our age of social media, we can use humor in order to get into peopleâs heads. There is a comedian (@lukastarnold) on Instagram / TikTok account who has a long-running gag of âhow womenâs clothes were inventedâ where he satirizes all the ridiculous aspects about womenâs fashion, ranging from heels to dresses to sports bras. While I may not remember what he has said in each of his posts, the essence (womenâs body standards are ridiculous and body positivity is the future) comes across powerfully.










