In their Spring 2014 advertisement campaign, lingerie and clothing brand Aerie began “challenging supermodel standards by featuring unretouched models in their latest collection of bras, undies, and apparel.” This began an important campaign for the campaign for the company, as they stopped retouching their models in any capacity–no removing scars, freckles, or stretch marks on the models featured in their ads. The campaign also launched a huge #AerieReal social media movement in which real girls across the world could feature themselves.
An image from the first Aerie Real campaign in 2014.
This transition from photo editing was huge for Aerie. It was important because they were (and continue to be) one of the few fashion brands that do not retouch their models. The audience for the brand is also a critical part of their decision to continue the Real campaign. With a target audience of fifteen to twenty-one year old women, Aerie realizes their customers are at a delicate age. Senior Editor at the Huffington Post Ellie Krupnick says, “young women’s sense of body confidence is so often influenced by the images of female beauty they see in media.” This stresses why showing natural, unedited girls speaks to the Aerie audience. Since launching the campaign in 2014, Aerie hasn’t retouched a single model.
In this campaign, Aerie is addressing a much larger societal issue. Women are judged on their weight, and magazines show the ideal woman as being extremely thin. Therefore, Aerie Real eliminates the “pressure to conform to a certain body type” the media stresses. The unhealthy body images promoted in the media are not just about eating disorders, but Body Image and Eating Disturbances. According to Neurology and Physiology blog Scicurious, “Body Image and Eating Disturbances can include eating disorders, but also include severe dissatisfaction with your body, overestimating body size, and chronic thoughts about weight loss.” In this way, digital editing in the media is extremely harmful.
Senior director of marketing at Aerie, Dana Seguin, says that the brand is changing permanently to give women realistic expectations. “This is our brand now. It’s not a seasonal campaign for us. It is now how we’re talking to our customers.” And this strategy of forgoing photoshop in favor for realness and positive body image is working for Aerie. In their first quarter with the Real campaign, the brand saw 9% sales increase.
The current Aerie Real campaign features model and social media personality Barbie Ferreira. Ferreira is the first full-figured model used by the campaign, and she says it’s important to her to work for a company that doesn’t retouch their models. Says Ferreira, “Knowing that that’s what I look like without anyone’s perception of what my body needs to look like. The world needs more women who are so strong.”
Barbie Ferreira, the first full-figured model featured in an Aerie Real campaign
On his blog, Ralph Hanson discusses how heavily editing images in fashion, beauty, and lifestyle magazines are. Curvier stars are almost unrecognizable with photo editing. Aerie Real not only features advertisements in these magazines; but also billboards, flyers, short videos, and a huge social media campaign.
Photoshop and other digital photo editing methods deal with the authenticity and appropriateness of photographs. Hanson questions how ethical it is for the media to produce images that are heavily edited and therefore untruthful. By these standards, Aerie Real is producing some of the most ethical media images. Their content upholds high ethical standards to produce truthful content and authentic photographs. By using absolutely no digital photo editing, Aerie Real is challenging the amount of photo manipulation society is willing to accept.
The Ethical Truth 