Were Dove’s “Real Women” retouched?
Posted
May 9, 2008 at
7:08 pm by
Prescott
I’m sure most of you are familiar with Dove’s “Real Beauty” campaign, in which the soap company used women with natural body types instead of heavily airbrushed stick-thin models. The ads were lauded across the mommy blogosphere for helping promote realistic images of women’s bodies instead of an unrealistic ideal. Now, according to a profile on digital retouching master Pascal Dangin in The New Yorker, it turns out that these “real” women may not have been so real after all:
[R]etouchers tend to practice semi-clandestinely. “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.”
Unilever, the company that owns the Dove brand, is denying doing anything above and beyond normal photo processing and color correction:
“The ‘real women’ ad referenced in recent media coverage was created and produced entirely by Ogilvy, the Dove brand’s advertising agency, from start to finish, and the women’s bodies were not digitally altered,” Unilever Senior Communications Marketing Manager Stacie Bright said in the statement, referring to the 2005 ad, which showed younger women in their underwear.
Ms. Bright and Mr. Dangin’s company, Box Studios, did not immediately respond to e-mail queries about precisely what the “color correction” entailed. But the [2007 Dove Pro-Age ads worked on by Dangin] were a later incarnation of the “Campaign for Real Beauty” than those apparently referenced in The New Yorker.
Whatever the truth is, it’s certain that Dove’s PR people are going to be working through the weekend.
Tags: dove-ads-retouched, dove-real-beauty-retouching, pascal-dangin, real-beauty-campaign, Social Issues |
8 Responses to “Were Dove’s “Real Women” retouched?”
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1. Rita
May 9, 2008 @ 7:55 pm
Well, there’s re-touched and there’s re-touched. One kind is the kind that removes a big ugly zit off of someone’s chin and another turns them into Pamela Anderson. I’m thinking Dove just removed big ugly zits and that sort of thing.
2. Tracy
May 10, 2008 @ 6:10 am
If they wanted a real woman they could have used me. What’s more real than stretch marks, back fat, and thighs that rub together?
I do love that new Dove soap, the ex foliating one? That smells like lemongrass, hubba!
3. Busy Mom
May 11, 2008 @ 10:43 pm
I don’t think it’s that big of a deal if they did some Photoshop work on them.
They got their point across about different body types and the pictures look nice enough to me.
4. Jennifer
May 12, 2008 @ 9:00 am
But what is so “Real” if they were retouched?? If they were retouched in anyway then that takes away the reality or the “real-ness” that Dove was trying to get across. They promoted that they were all real and nothing was done to alter the pictures but that turned out to be a bunch of crock. lol.
5. Jessica
May 12, 2008 @ 9:25 am
[quote comment="162879"]But what is so “Real” if they were retouched?? If they were retouched in anyway then that takes away the reality or the “real-ness” that Dove was trying to get across. They promoted that they were all real and nothing was done to alter the pictures but that turned out to be a bunch of crock. lol.[/quote]
I agree. If they can’t show their cellulite, it’s no different than skinny models getting up there and being airbrushed. It’s not real women.
6. Jennifer
May 12, 2008 @ 9:40 am
[quote comment="162885"][quote comment="162879"]But what is so “Real” if they were retouched?? If they were retouched in anyway then that takes away the reality or the “real-ness” that Dove was trying to get across. They promoted that they were all real and nothing was done to alter the pictures but that turned out to be a bunch of crock. lol.[/quote]
I agree. If they can’t show their cellulite, it’s no different than skinny models getting up there and being airbrushed. It’s not real women.[/quote]
I know because only about 2% of the population doesn’t have cellulite.. haha.
7. Kristy
May 12, 2008 @ 11:46 am
I could always tell some work had been done. No one’s skin looks that smooth and perfectly even all over, especially no one carrying a little weight. It was a step in the right direction, at least.
8. Richelle
March 7, 2009 @ 8:50 pm
Seriously, would anyone want to look at a woman’s body in ads like these that hasn’t been retouched? Except for her significant other, most likely not. Dove would have lost some serious business if they had used completely real images of women. I still say Kudos for what they did with this ad campaign. But let’s be honest, everyone would have been grossed out seeing women’s bodies with all of their imperfections. Sad, but true. What our society regards as beautiful is way too narrow. As narrow as the skinny models trotted out to portray it.