flickering pictures

Dove’s much-ballyhooed “Real Beauty” advertising campaign makes a point of showcasing “real women” — love handles and all — as opposed to the scrawny models and twenty-somethings that typically prance around in beauty product ads. As it turns out, the Dove models may not be so real after all.

The New Yorker’s Lauren Collins recently sat down with Pascal Dangin, quite possibly the world’s leading airbrush artist, for a feature piece that’s actually quite interesting and offers a neat look at how a flick of the airbrush turns everyday women into cover girls. Dangin works with Air France, American Express, Disney, Louis Vuitton, Tiffany & Co., Vogue, Victoria’s Secret, Vanity Fair… well you get the idea. Point is, he apparently worked on the Dove campaign as well, and had this to say:

Do you know how much retouching was on that?” he asked. “But it was great to do, a challenge, to keep everyone’s skin and faces showing the mileage but not looking unattractive.”

I’ve always thought this was a neat campaign, and I still do. In an advertising environment saturated with emaciated stick figures, Dove’s ads are a sorely needed reminder that you don’t need a perfectly sculpted body to be beautiful, and the women in the ads — airbrushed or otherwise — truly are. But it’s a little sad that not even Dove was confident enough about the natural beauty of these radiant “ordinary women” to lay off the airbrushing.

Image via cultureby.com.

• plug this post
  
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • NewsVine
  • Reddit
  • StumbleUpon
  • Technorati