Were Dove's 'Real' Women Retouched Fakes?

by Jarrett Martineau | May 8, 2008 at 10:20 am
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I was always highly skeptical about Dove's campaign for "real" beauty. Turns out I had a real reason to be. Hypocrites.
You know that Dove "Campaign for Real Beauty," which featured women slightly less skeletal than the average model, and therefore demonstrated that Dove is the greatest, most big-hearted company ever in the world? Well now there's a scandal about it! A new New Yorker story about Pascal Dangin, the world's "premier retoucher of fashion photographs," contains this tidbit on Dove's campaign, which ostensibly celebrates authentic, unadulterated womanhood:
"It is known that everybody does it, but they protest," Dangin said recently. "The people who complain about retouching are the first to say, 'Get this thing off my arm.' " I mentioned the Dove ad campaign that proudly featured lumpier-than-usual "real women" in their undergarments. It turned out that it was a Dangin job. "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."

Why, that would make Dove a bunch of rank hypocrites! A spokeswoman for Dove's ad agency tells Ad Age that "We are unsure right now what he did,"

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Heiky
Heiky
flagged this story as Good Stuff

at 10:28 on May 8th, 2008

That's awful! The dove commercials were always an inspiration to me.

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Amy Judd

Ha! I knew it!

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Jordan Yerman

That sucks.  (<- my thoughtful analysis for the day)

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Mikasi

I am suddenly struck with the desire to barrage their fax machine and email system with pictures of my ass... At'll learn em!

This story was created over 3 months ago, the comment thread is now closed.

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