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.
6 responses so far ↓
1 Asher Vijay // May 8, 2008 at 3:26 pm
Sigh.
2 Florentine // Oct 23, 2008 at 5:35 am
I’m just surprised that anyone was surprised by this.
3 Christine // Feb 17, 2009 at 10:28 pm
Honestly? I don’t think it detracts from the message of the ads. Every single photo in a magazine is airbrushed. Retouching removes shadows, stray hairs, pimples, et cetera, that are distracting and unappealing. If they hadn’t airbrushed the subjects, people would look at the ad and only notice the cellulite, shadows and pimples–not the fact that there are beautiful women both over 120 lbs and 21 years old.
4 Laura // Mar 2, 2009 at 2:39 am
But the whole point of the Dove campaign was that airbrushing was a distortion of women’s “real beauty.” I can see why people feel cheated, although they were pretty naive to fall for the Campaign for Real Beauty in the first place.
5 Missy // Feb 10, 2010 at 12:42 am
Off topic, but why did Dove pose its models with their asses in the air? It looks like they’re passing gas.
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