Real Woman Campaign

The approach of Black Friday means we are inundated with commercials showing all the insanely good deals that we will be able to get. Something I've been noticing this year is that the models in all of the commercials look so small! I am a small person and I am not incredibly judgmental of other small girls. I like being small and I can understand other girls wanting to be small. But there are a few commercials this year that have just blown my mind in terms of how small the models are.

I know I've talked about Victoria's Secret before and I'm going to mention them again: their holiday commercial makes me feel scared for the girls in it. They are tiny. Their knees and collarbones are just sticking out there and you can see their hipbones and ribs through their skin. It really freaked me out because I was anorexic for years and these girls have no way of getting that small while staying healthy.

Kohl's has a commercial out for their weekend sales and the models are so tiny! They're in clothing, but they are gaunt and they look like stick figures. There is a little girl in the commercial, too, and she's also incredibly small.

What are we teaching our kids, especially our girls? That being small means you're pretty and sexy and guys will want you? That's pretty much all I'm seeing.

I think it would be smarter to use real women in commercials. Think about it: how often do you see something on a model, think it's beautiful, you go buy it, and it looks completely different on you? That happens to me all the time! Yes, I'm small, but I'm also short, which means that what I see on the models doesn't look the same when I put it on. We should realize that 35% of America is obese and even those of us who aren't obese don't look like models. Models aren't realistic when it comes to showing us what clothes will look like on our bodies.

This year, if I buy a piece of clothing, I'm going to take a picture of myself in it and send it to the store I bought it from so they can see what it looks like on a real person. We all should do this! Please join me in the "Real Woman Campaign: Showing Retailers Reality" and send your pictures in. We won't get anything changed unless we push to make it change. Let's show the reality of the situation; be real women and show the reality!

"Be the change you wish to see in the world." --Gandhi

Mini-Experiment: Swimsuit Photo Retouching

One of my friends sent me this article this morning about retouched Victoria's Secret Swim photos. It shows one side by side photo of the untouched photo and the retouched photo, along with a list of things they touched up on the photo.

Side by side: original vs touched up. Photos courtesy of Victoria's Secret.

This is the original article back in August with all the leaked untouched photos of Victoria's Secret Angel, Doutzen. After I saw all the original photos, I went the Victoria's Secret Swim site and found some of the other retouched photos in their ads. Here are three of them along with a few of the things they changed.

Untouched photo.

This is the retouched photo of the tankini to the left. Here is a list of the things they changed:

• The color of the tankini.
• Made the skirt flat across the front.
• Removed the pooch by her armpit.
• Took away the lines in the bend of her elbow.
• Removed some of the pooching on her left hip.
• Pulled in the tankini top by her left hip to make it look like it fits better.
• Got rid of all the bunching of the top above her right hip.
• Took away the fly-aways in her hair and moved it around a little bit.
• Made her left leg skinnier on the inside.
• Flattened out her right hip below the skirt.
• Something to her chin. It actually looks like they pulled her jaw up in the retouch to make her face look more square.
• Removed some of the shadow on her stomach.
• Obviously: lighting.

Untouched photo.

This is the retouched photo of the tankini at left (yes, it's the same tankini). What they changed:

• Her eyebrow lines between her eyebrows.
• Face shape--in the untouched photo, you can see much more definition on the left side of her face than in the retouched photo.
• Removed hip bone shadow.
• Flattened skirt out.
• Put side skirt strings into a bow.
• Flattened outside of right thigh.
• Removed bunching of top on her left side.
• Erased longest piece of hair peeking out from behind her back.
• Flattened out armpit pooch on her right side.
• Defined the shadow on her boobs to make them look bigger.
• Again, obviously, lighting.

Untouched photo.

Here is the retouched photo from the ad of the bikini pictured left. What they changed:

• She's wearing underwear in the untouched photo.
• Removed the pooching on her right side below the band of the top.
• Made her ribs look less boney.
• Smoothed out her right arm--she has sand or something on it in the untouched photo.
• Filled in her belly button a little bit. These are all silly, but this one really doesn't make any sense!
• Smoothed out her right thigh.
• Got rid of some of the fly-aways.
• Touched up her left elbow area.
• Made her chest look less boney.
• Removed a mole on her neck and right shoulder.
• Lighting!!!

Erin Heatherton, Angel.

Erin Heatherton, another Victoria's Secret Angel, said this to Fashionista about the airbrushing: "Retouching is an essential part of our job, you know. We're not selling reality; we're selling a story. It's all about creating this fantasy. And I don't think people should confuse fantasy and reality because no one is perfect--we all know that, and I think people should embrace themselves and not really focus on where people are depicted as perfect and where they're not."

This is such a matter-of-fact quote! She acts like all of us should just assume that everything is retouched. They don't advertise their edits, though. Even when I worked at Victoria's Secret, we never talked about the models except for when an associate would start the Who-Is-Your-Favorite-Angel? conversation.

All of this editing talk got me wondering about the VS Fashion Show. They tape it almost a month before it airs. This year they're taping on November 7, but it's not airing until December 4. I understand that the point of the show is to do a Christmas preview, but why not do a live fashion show on December 4? I spent about 20 minutes looking around the internet to find out...and found nothing. But why do they need four weeks between taping and airing the show? It makes me wonder if there is more than just audio editing to do of the taping.

So, if all of these Victoria's Secret ads are just "creating this fantasy," then why do so many women work so hard to try to be this fantasy? All this "fantasy" is just making men and women expect perfection, and when we're not, because, as Erin said, "No one is perfect," it becomes a disappointment. Why should we keep buying $50+ bras that will supposedly make us a perfect fantasy, if they really don't? All this does is make women feel incredibly insecure because we will never be what men and other women see. So then a new bra comes out at Victoria's Secret--a "bombshell"--and suddenly we think, "Oh good! This will make me so much sexier because that's what the ad says and shows!" And then we go buy the new bra for $60. And then we're disappointed again.

We are being played by the marketers of the lingerie industry. I refuse to feel insecure. I refuse to allow retouching to deter me from loving myself. Still committing to confidence!

I decided to do a little experiment: take my own photo in my favorite VS bikini and show it unedited, then edited. The bikini I'm wearing is from the 2010 collection I think. I know it's "out of season" but it's still my favorite! Here's the photo as it was taken with the exception of cropping it closer. The only reason I cropped it is that it was a landscape layout and there was a lot of wall that didn't need to be there!

Edited photo.

And then here is the same photo edited. I don't have any airbrushing tools--just basic editing. I played with the exposure, contrast, highlights, temperature, shadow, and of course, kept the previous cropping.

The first one I took is obviously "real." The other one looks "prettier" in terms of the fact that since I changed the exposure, there are more highlights, but it's not what I look like in real life. I think it's a pretty picture, but it's not me. Also, there is a lot that professional editors would need to change: hair, folds on the bottom of the bikini, armpit shadows, eyelashes (I didn't use enough mascara), and cleavage (I don't have any!).

So. Love yourself. Stay confident. Don't allow these "fantasies" to change how you feel about yourself. Even though my second photo is more acceptable or whatever it is, the woman in the first photo is the woman my fiance is in love with and the woman I am in love with. The first girl is me. The second girl is me + special effects, and this is really basic editing; nothing like what they do with the Victoria's Secret photos. Stay confident! You're beautiful!

"Be the change you wish to see in the world." --Gandhi

#committoconfidence