The Business of Beauty fights for all women to possess a healthy perspective of beauty. We believe that female-geared companies can facilitate this perspective and empower women by advocating that all women are beautiful. 

 

In order to convey this message, campaigns should feature a wide variety of women with different body types, sizes, races, abilities, and more. If we are going to relay that all women are beautiful, we need to see all women represented and portrayed in a positive light. 

 

Below are examples of campaigns that portray all females are gorgeous. We will explore what each campaign does in order to convey this idea and why this is an important issue. 

 

 

 

Aerie and its #AerieReal campaign: 

The lingerie, swimsuit, athletic, and loungewear brand of American Eagle Outfitters advocates that all women are beautiful. 

 

With their #AerieReal campaign, they have committed to “[using] un-airbrushed, un-photoshopped images of models in their ads” and have now expanded to featuring non-models in their photoshoots (Kane).

 

In 2018, Aerie released a lingerie photoshoot including over fifty real women (Kane). This campaign featured women of various sizes, body types, ages, and race (Kane). As well, the photoshoot encompassed women with “disabilities, chronic illness, surgery scars, and other conditions” (Kane). 

 

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Here are a couple of Twitter responses to these photos: 

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At the beginning of 2019,

Aerie released

the next installment

of their #AerieReal

campaign, the Role

Models. As you can see,

they are a diverse group

of women representing

different races,

body sizes and shapes,

and abilities. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One of the Role Models, Molly Burke, a Youtube content creator, filmed her experience with Aerie. Before taking us behind the scenes of the photoshoot, she expresses her gratitude at being chosen to be an Aerie Role Model. She talks about how she’s short, blind, fair-skinned, a pair shape, and has purple hair and that she never sees women like her represented. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“I was so nervous thinking like oh my god, am I cut out for this? Like I have purple hair! You know? Like I’m just not typically what you see represented. That’s what’s so cool about Aerie, is they don’t do what’s typically represented. They do real women.”

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-Molly Burke

 

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How is Aerie making a difference?

Aerie’s #AerieReal campaign advocates that all women are beautiful.

By representing various women in their photoshoots, Aerie places them

somewhere they haven’t usually been seen: the beauty industry.

Where we’ve typically seen one or two portrayals of female beauty,

we now have multiple. This shift in representation depicts that all women

are beautiful no matter what size, shape, race, age, ability, etc. You can

see this shift in the Twitter responses as well as other companies

advertising in the same way. 

 

 

 

 

 

Dove and their Real Beauty campaign:

In 2004, Dove, owned by the Unilever company, began its Real Beauty campaign. The brand began “featuring a diversity of body types and ages in their advertising with the goal of increasing body satisfaction in women” (Bue and Harrison 627). 

 

They created the Dove Real Beauty Pledge in which they proposed three promises:

1. “We always feature real women, never models.”

2. “We portray women as they are in real life.”

3. “We help girls build body confidence and self-esteem” (“The ‘Dove Real Beauty Pledge’”). 

 

 

This oath is apparent in Dove’s advertising and website. 

 

In their #ShowUs commercial, Dove depicts women of multiple ages, sizes, races, and abilities. As well, transgender women are shown. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“What if we can

show you a vision of

beauty where no

woman or girl

were excluded?” 

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Dove also tackles how beauty standards affect a woman’s success.

 

In their #BeautyBias commercial, women talk about their experiences in the workforce and how their appearance has impacted whether they got the job or how they were treated during work. Dove explores how standards of attractiveness create a bias. 

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On their website in the Dove Stories tab, Dove explores this issue and other topics. These articles discuss feeling beautiful and self-confidence. Click the buttons below to visit the Dove Stories tab or read the Beauty Bias article:

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If you scroll down below these articles, you can click on the pictures of various women and read about their relationship to beauty.

 

As you can see, these women are all visually different and viewers can most likely relate to at least one of these pictures. 

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How is Dove making a difference?

In an industry where only a few physical

representations of women are shown,

Dove is making a statement by including

women who are visually distinct.

 

By showing so many different women

in their commercials and online,

Dove makes sure their watchers are

seeing themselves on screen and

viewing themselves as beautiful.

 

Advertisements have influenced standards

of attractiveness and perceptions

of who is beautiful.

 

Therefore, Dove is using their Real Beauty

campaign to challenge the bias that

beauty standards create and express

that all women are gorgeous in

their unique ways. 

 

 

 

 

 

Why is it important that all women are seen as beautiful?

 

For women that have not been typically depicted as beautiful, their representation in advertising is crucial.

 

Because the media influences standards of attractiveness and portrays a narrow view of beauty, many groups of women don’t see themselves as beautiful.

 

If advertisements would represent all types of female physicality, these women who have been historically ignored will begin to feel recognized and beautiful.

 

One group that would benefit from representation is women who do not fit into society’s standard of thinness. We feel that if all women were seen as beautiful these individuals would have higher self-esteem and embrace their bodies.

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Researchers Darlow and Lobel analyzed a diverse group of Northeastern American college-aged women and their “responses to having their appearance evaluated 1) by themselves or by another student, and 2) in comparison to the appearance of female peers or without comparison” (833).

 

For overweight women who internalized society’s ideal of thinness, the researchers found that these individuals had low self-esteem in regards to their appearances and views of self (Darlow and Lobel 833).

 

This group of women also “expected a lower attractiveness rating than normal-weight women”, showing their insecurity around their body size (Darlow and Lobel 838). 

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Not only would the idea that all women are beautiful affect these women’s self-esteem but it would also allow them to accept their body.

 

Imagine viewing women of all sizes on store billboards and television advertisements. This representation in the beauty industry would convey that these women are absolutely fine the way they are.

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Imagine if all women felt that how they looked was good enough.

 

Imagine if all girls did not feel the constant ache to change. 

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A Note on Health:

 

We would also like to note that while we, at The Business of Beauty, promote a healthy perspective of beauty, we also promote a healthy lifestyle.

 

If you or someone you know is at risk due to being under or overweight, please reach out to a medical professional.

 

Just like being beautiful, we also want to note that being healthy is not one size fits all. 

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We feel that Nomy Lamm said this best in her essay, “It’s a Big Fat Revolution.” Lamm, the self-labeled “fat, Jewish, disabled, anarchist dyke”, is well-known for her artistic confrontations of society’s beauty standards (454).

 

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The vocalist and writer has tackled issues

that affected her personally such as perceptions

of fatness and body image (Lamm).

 

In “It’s a Big Fat Revolution”, Lamm declares that

society is at fault for fat-shaming and expresses

that we should accept our bodies for what they are (Lamm).

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Lamm confronts the dichotomy of health and fatness,

saying that “health risks to fat people have been proven

to be a result of continuous starvation—dieting—and

not of fat itself” (457).

 

Furthermore, she writes that her eating is managed

and healthy due to her having a vegetarian diet

since she was a child (Lamm).

 

Paired with her historically healthy eating habits,

she concludes that her body is meant to be the way it is: 

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My body is supposed to be like this, and I've been on plenty of diets where I've kept off some weight for a period of several months and then gained it all back. Two years ago I finally ended the cycle. I am not dieting anymore because I know that this is how my body is supposed to be, and this is how I want it to be. Being fat does not make me less healthy or less active. Being fat does not make me less attractive. (Lamm 458)

 

As well, Lamm challenges the notion that beauty is only on the inside, saying that it is ignoring who we are. She believes that we must view our bodies as beautiful.

 

And I don't want to be told, “Yes you're fat, but you're beautiful on the inside.” That's just another way of telling me that I'm ugly, that there's no way that I'm beautiful on the outside. Fat does not equal ugly, don't give me that. My body is me. I want you to see my body, acknowledge my body. True revolution comes not when we learn to ignore our fat and pretend we're no different, but when we learn to use it to our advantage, when we learn to deconstruct all the myths that propagate fat-hate. (Lamm 458-459)

 

We totally agree with Nomy Lamm.

 

Like Lamm, we want all women to be seen and seen especially as beautiful.

 

As she said, society makes us feel shame for our bodies and that is why we, at The Business of Beauty, feel advertising can be influential in changing this reality. 

 

 

Who else would benefit from all women being seen as beautiful?

 

 

Another group we feel would benefit from the idea that all women are gorgeous is nonwhite women. Representations of beauty have historically been limited to show only white women.

 

For example, the whiteness of physical standards manifested in the Miss America pageant where nonwhite women used to be prohibited from participating (Vandenberg).

 

After winning Miss Iowa, Cheryl Brown would be the first African American contestant at the Miss America nationals in the year 1970 (Vandenberg). 

 

 

 

These limiting standards produced the Black is Beautiful movement (Vandenberg).

 

African American women had been subscribing to white ideals of beauty up until the mid-1960s when the Black is Beautiful movement encouraged these women to “leave their hair in a natural or afro hairstyle rather than straightening their hair” (Vandenburg 168).

 

In other words, this movement, reacting to white beauty standards, inspired African American women to love themselves (Vandenburg). 

 

Obviously, white ideals of beauty did not only affect African American women. Therefore, women of multiple backgrounds were influenced to think that white characteristics were beautiful. With a movement like Black is Beautiful, unpopularized physical traits are recognized and brought into the beauty circuit. 

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In today’s advertising, companies and brands can launch campaigns that feature women of various races. Not only will this raise the self-esteem of nonwhite women but they will love their bodies as they are. 

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