If it's true, this could be major: Dove's real beauty campaign may not be so real after all. In an exhaustive New Yorker profile of fashion industry digital retoucher Pascal Dangin, writer Lauren Collins gleans that a whole lotta photoshopping was done in the Dove "real beauty" ad campaign, which featured a plethora of semi-clad non-models, with lumps, wrinkles, and all – or so we thought. The campaign's benchmark was the award-winning "Evolution" ad spot, which shows an everyday pretty woman who is transformed into a billboard-worthy supermodel through the magic of makeup, styling and computer retouching. It kind of feels like being told Santa Claus isn't real, doesn't it?
UPDATE: Dangin, in a statement from Unilever (Dove's parent company), has since clarified his involvement in the "real beauty" retouching controversy by saying that he only did retouching work on the ProAge campaign ads (and not the Real Beauty campaign). He also says his work involved only color correction and removing dust from the shots. It's funny, I smelled something fishy about this from the beginning: The section about Dangin and the Dove campaign in the New Yorker piece was incredibly vague, and never specified what actual retouching work went on, and for which campaign. Hmmm, seems like shoddy fact-checking/reporting to me....
5 comments:
Don't let it be true! I wrote on LatestBeauty about how much I love those ads! Thanks for the heads up though! I guess if it's too good to be true...
I don't care if this ad was photoshopped. For once, a company launched a campaign that tried to advertise "real women" in a loving and even flattering light. I feel so much joy when I look at those ads, while I think, "women that I can identify with". At least they try to make every woman feel secure in her own skin...
Well, I am saddened but not shocked.
The central question is this--
As consumers, did we believe that Dove's goal was to help women or sell women their synthetic bodycare?
What is the stated mission of their business as written in their articles of incorporation or their corporate charter. Was it MAXIMIZE SHAREHOLDER VALUE, PER CHANCE?
We should learn more about the mission and purpose of the brands we support.
Checkout www.bcorporation.net for a movement that allows companies to set a new corporate standard for social and environmental performance along side their drive for profit.
Unilever has also been reported to be using palm oil in their products (including Dove) bought from suppliers that have contributed to the massive destruction of Indonesian rainforests. How can they claim to represent real women and natural beauty when they do is lie and destroy? I'm really disappointed.
thefgirl - thank you for bringing this to my attention. to be fair, the retouching thing may have been blown out of proportion/incorrectly reported. on the whole, I think that Dove accurately represented the women in those ads, with minimal retouching, since they do look pretty real after all.
as for the palm oil thing – yikes, that's a whole other can o' worms. good luck with that one, Dove...
;)
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