New Yorker Alleges Dove's 'Real Beauty' Photos Airbrushed
05.08.2008
Yikes. According to the New Yorker (story here at Ad Age), the photos of the “real women” in their underwear were doctored — made more model-like — by airbrush artist Pascal Dangin.
No doubt they were also wearing makeup, clothing custom-made to flatter their bodies, and were photographed under ideal lighting conditions. The horror. Once an image becomes part of a piece of media, it’s just not part of ‘reality’ anymore.
Ha! True enough. But the mistake Doves makes, in my opinion, is suggesting that this campaign is in fact different from other ad campaigns: no professional models, no unrealistic bodies, nothing to make the rest of feel insecure about how we look. Dove Evolution, the viral-video cousin to this Real Beauty campaign, draws much of its power from showing us why the models we see in ad campaigns have a kind of beauty that is so unattainable — their “perfect” beauty is largely manufactured in post-production stage, the computer-aided process of removing blemishes and reshaping anatomy.
Wouldn’t it have been interesting to turn this happen stance into a conversation or even a debate about what the public thinks. I see a great opportunity that could have turned into a listening exercise and game changing role.
Ad Age ran an article yesterday by Jonah Bloom that made a great point about just that and also another thought to consider:
” I haven’t heard of a smarter way of doing that than P&G’s recent decision to let consumers make the decisions on two media controversies: the company’s support for TV shows that contained perceived profanity and shows displaying gay kissing. Perhaps that’s what Unilever should’ve done in this case too — put it to a vote: Do you want your billboards complete with every last pubic hair or do you agree that there’s such a thing as too real? ”
- Ogilvy, Dove Miss Chance to Turn Bad Press Into ‘Debate’
maybe it really would have been a bit to real?