And our most popular post of 2013 was...

To finish up the year that was, we’re going to bring you the most popular Mamamia posts of 2013. It’s like a countdown, an advent calendar of sorts, but one that gets your through the post-Christmas blur and into the new year. We’ve been lucky to have some truly wonderful writers join us to share their thoughts on Mamamia this year. This is the very, very best of what they had to offer. Enjoy.

Imagine if you were asked to explain your own beauty to someone. Would you struggle?

Yeah. You and the other 3.5 billion women on the planet.

The reality is that most of us can’t see our own beauty like the people around us can. We’re constantly underestimating ourselves. In fact, only 4% of women around the world consider themselves beautiful.

This video will change the way that you think and feel about your own beauty….

An FBI-trained forensic artist, Gil Zamora, created sketches of seven women who were hidden behind a curtain; he used their self-descriptions as the basis of his drawings. Prior to the session with Zamora, each of the women were also asked to spend some time with a stranger – without being told why. Zamora then also drafted sketches from the stranger’s depictions of the women.

And the result? Well, we’ll let you see for yourself.

The Dove Real Beauty Sketches campaign encourages women to reassess how they see themselves.

You can join the conversation on Dove’s Facebook page here.

And if you needed further reminding of exactly WHY women’s perceptions of beauty are so skewed, then click through this gallery of photoshop fails.

Editor’s note: This is not a sponsored post. We’re just big fans of this ad campaign and wanted to share this video exclusively, with you.

At Mamamia absolutely everything is up for discussion: from pop culture to politics, body image to motherhood, feminism to fashion. We unashamedly cover what everyone is talking about today: whether that’s stories which will make you laugh out loud, cover your mouth in shock, help you get informed or start you thinking about an issue in a different way and sometimes, we help you to just switch off the brain power from a few sweet minutes and kick back. Follow us on Twitter here or like us on Facebook here.