Dove is expanding its efforts to enhance diverse representation within the virtual realm.

After difficult unrealistic standards of beauty for girls in video games with the 2022 launch of its Real Virtual Beauty coalition, the brand is introducing Code My Crown, a 226-page guide to coding natural hairstyles.

“Dove’s mission is to make a positive experience of beauty universally accessible to everyone. While gaming can provide a wealthy and positive influence…the portrayal of girls and other people of color in video games isn’t at all times so positive,” said Lauren Baker, senior brand manager of engagement and social impact, citing Dove research that shows 85 percent of Black gamers imagine video games poorly represent natural hair.

To that end, Dove partnered with the Open Source Afro Hair Library and a team of Black 3D artists and animators to develop 15 hair sculpts including bantu knots, twists, a braided bob, an afro with a fade, cornrows and more in all their intricate glory — something video game animation has historically did not do.

Dove tapped celebrity hairstylist Nai’vasha Grace to ideate and inform the 15 chosen styles.

“When you consider realistic bantu knots, or when you consider the pineapple [hairstyle] or super cool cornrows that look real, that appear to be a one that’s walking up the road — that’s what I desired to put on the market. That’s what I desired to share,” said Grace, whose clientele includes Tracee Ellis Ross and Alicia Keys.

Each style has a loyal chapter with step-by-step breakdowns for video game developers searching for to copy the looks — even offering design adjustments depending on desired hair texture. Among the many digital artists who created the guides are Diandra Rose, Chrissy Powell and Adésayo Adéoyé.

“When you’ve got curly hair or are in any way a part of an underrepresented group and also you eat media that you simply don’t see yourself in…it’s easy to condition yourself to take a backseat with a purpose to benefit from the belongings you love and the things which can be found to you,” said A.M. Darke, who launched the Open Source Afro Hair Library this fall as a free database of 3D-modeled Black hairstyles.

“Open Source Afro Hair Library is about rethinking our relationship to blackness in a technological space. Fashion, beauty, race, gender — those are all things I’m concerned with in my life as a Black woman, and so they’re an element of games. I don’t think it needs to be an afterthought to think concerning the care and detail of how I look once I engage with any type of media.”

For Dove, this initiative extends the missions of its long-standing Self Esteem Project in addition to its work to finish hair-based discrimination via the Crown Coalition, to the realm of gaming, which has change into an increasingly influential space for consumers of all ages, but particularly young consumers.

“I need this to be the blueprint,” said Grace. “I need this [guide] to be for all the game developers globally to make use of as a baseline to share their perspective of themselves, what they appear like or what they wish to appear to be — and to have the choice to achieve this.”