There was lots of discussion today at Organic about this before-and-after spot from Unilever North America, which has been actively embracing the web this year.

Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty shows how manufactured model
beauties really are. They take a real women and turn her into billboard glam
through the magic of Makeup, Good Photography, and of course
Photoshop.

It’s part of a wider campaign aimed at raising self-esteem for girls 8-12, itself an outgrowth of the successful Real Women/Real Curves campaign that showed "typical" women posing in their underwear than ran last Fall. 

The Real Women campaign, which included a Superbowl commercial, was in many ways more radical – challenging the viewer to confront their own preconceptions of whether a husky women should be posing in her underwear.

Picking up that theme in the current campaign, a lot of our discussion centered on what ends up defining our concept of beauty.  Is it a biologically programmed desire for facial symmetry? Seed Magazine recently reported on a study
in the Journal of Psychological Science which
proposed that the perception of beauty is a result of average features, which are easier for the brain to process.

How does the media (which, incidentally, includes both Dove and Organic) manipulate those basic instincts to encourage women’s insecurities?  And why do men get a free pass?

Richard Liechty included these sites with a
couple of his favorite before/after retouching examples.  (mouse over the photo
to see the before):  "I’ve shown these to my daughters when talking to them about
"fictional beauty portrayed in movies, magazines,
etc."

http://homepage.mac.com/gapodaca/digital/bikini/index.html

http://homepage.mac.com/gapodaca/digital/blonde/blonde1.html

http://www.photoshopnews.com/2005/04/03/kate-doesnt-like-photoshop/

Thanks to Chris, David, Erika, Shaun, Richard, and James.

Misha Cornes