By Katherine Bakaitis
Staff Writer
American Eagle’s Aerie lingerie has taken new lengths to expand its customer base by introducing its new campaign featuring only untouched and airbrush-free models.
“We’ve left everything. We’ve left beauty marks, we’ve left tattoos, what you see is really what you get with our campaign,” said Jenny Altman, Aerie’s Style and Fit expert. “We hope that by embracing this, real girls everywhere will start embracing their own beauty.”
In this day and age, it’s beyond important to encourage females of all ages to have self-confidence about who they really are, blemishes, muffin tops and all. While Aerie is just skimming the surface of this issue with the new campaign, it’s certainly on the right track.
It’s amazing how American Eagle is trying to break away from the “super skinny” model types with its new lingerie campaign, and I know so many people who praise this decision, but in order to capture the true “average” American woman, it needs to expand its model depth to different sizes, shapes, and heights. The women in its new ads are still professional models, and therefore already considered by society as “beautiful.” Unfortunately, society is not quite ready to take on the true female form without overreacting about how it is “promoting obesity” (I’m flashing back to when the media complained about the TV sitcom Mike and Molly). But no matter what you believe, there is no doubt that its message, “the real you is sexy,” is a simple, yet fantastic slogan.
Retouching photos is a much talked about topic as of late, especially with popular stars like Kim Kardashian, Kerry Washington, and Beyonce, who are recently coming under fire for their heavily photoshopped images. Stars that are already beautiful by society’s standards and in their own right like Jennifer Lawrence (as well as those mentioned above) are being photoshopped for their minute “flaws.” If even the people who set the standards for beauty and fashion are susceptible to ridicule for gaining some weight, or even losing it, then our society has some really ugly issues that need to be resolved. Personally, I think that how people look before they were photoshopped (you know, normal), is better than the scary-looking after effects because flaws are beautiful! An irritation in my XL belly grows when I see an already skinny woman in a picture being retouched or photoshopped to be made to look thinner. Our society can be absolutely disgusting, especially when it expects girls to be a size two at the largest.
On our own campus, there is a club called “Girls 4 God,” a.k.a. G4G, which promotes inner beauty and loving yourself for who you truly are. It encourages students to self-reflect on issues that really matter, and the organization’s purpose is to “help, support, encourage, and empower girls and women,” according to its leader and founder, Tinamarie Stolz.
Every woman deserves to feel sexy and confident and not dejected about how she looks in comparison to Victoria’s Secret models (news flash, ladies: they resort to unhealthy methods to achieve that scary-skinny body). Society needs to get a grip on what really matters, like say health and wellness. As long as you have that and you treat people with at least basic decency, you are golden.
