Before I get to the good news, I want to first discuss a Victoria's Secret campaign, "The Perfect 'Body'". Now, I understand that this campaign is supposed to be about a new bra style that they launched. However, it became a huge issue and gained a lot of negative attention from a lot of people. What was so controversial about this campaign was the fact that they put the words "The Perfect Body" over a photo of their extremely skinny models. People took this as a message about body image, essentially thinking that Victoria's Secret promoted skinny bodies as the only type of body that was perfect. Due to all the controversy surrounding the ad, the company went back and changed the message. They changed it to "A Body For Everybody". Although they did not change their models, some good did come out of this. They became more conscious of the message they were displaying and did something about it.
The main piece of news that I wanted to discuss with this post involves Aerie. Over the past year, Aerie launched their newest campaign, "Aerie Real". The campaign focuses on the fact that they will no longer be retouching any of their photos. They leave tattoos showing and stretch marks. They also do not smooth any of the skin shown in the photos, which means that all wrinkles are shown. If you look at the article (posted under the photo above) and scroll down, you will see the message the Aerie sent out with this campaign. They claimed that they wanted to make everyone feel beautiful and happy in their own bodies. They promote bodies of all shapes and sizes and want everyone to begin to see body images in a different light. Also in this article, right after Aerie's message is displayed, they have examples of magazine covers who have followed in their footsteps. This sends out an amazing and inspiring message to everyone, including children. It should make people become more comfortable in their own skin and should make them not want to change a single thing about themselves. It may have taken a big company to make this much of a difference, but it definitely is for the best and will help many people see that society's views are not always the right ones.