It’s unfortunate that we live in a society so obsessed with an unobtainable image of perfection that nearly every advertisement and editorial shoot we see is heavily Photoshopped (we’re talking hours if not days of edits). It has spawned a whole industry — from open calls for original images to US Weekly articles on what celebrities really looks like. While it shows no signs of stopping anytime soon, some progress is being made. Who can forget the now famous Dove commercials and their mission for real beauty? The latest to hop on this train is American Eagle’s lingerie store Aerie. The brand has launched Aerie Real, a Spring 2014 ad campaign featuring all unairbrushed models.
The campaign is “challenging supermodel standards by featuring unretouched models in their latest collection of bras, undies and apparel,” the store said in a public statement. This move is not only astute because it gives Aerie the kind of press and attention it could otherwise only have dreamed of (cynical, but that surely was part of the brand’s reasoning), but it’s also critical that we stop brainwashing the public with what basically amounts to deceptive images — especially companies like Aerie, whose target demographic is 15-21 year olds.
