As expected, this ad caused a lot of outrage in the body-positive community, and many people spoke out against it-- myself included. Another underwear brand, Dear Kate, decided to make an ad of their own, which they thought was a little more inclusive and honest.
It shows women of all different heights, weight, shapes, and skin color-- and guess what? They all look fab. Dear Kate's message is clear and simple: all women, regardless of what they look like, are beautiful. Our bodies are perfect because they're ours.
Dove decided to take part, of course, considering that they are the pioneers of the body positive movement in advertising.
Again, they are essentially saying the same thing. Real women are beautiful, no matter their size. Everyone is perfect, not just the thin models seen on a Victoria's Secret ad. This is the kind of stuff young girls should be seeing. That women that look like their moms, sisters, aunts, teachers, are all beautiful. Being a model doesn't equal being perfect.
So Victoria's Secret had no other option than try to appease the crazy feminists of the world, and went ahead and released a new ad. Same models, same descriptive text, same everything. But a new slogan: "A body for every body."
And it works, I guess. It's easier to understand that they are referring to a bra collection. The Perfect "Body" was intentionally misleading, I'm sure. In fact, I can probably correctly assume that they had this ad ready for when the outrage and backlash would start. They were expecting people to get upset. Despite this ad saying that there is a bra in the Body by Victoria collection for everyone, the fact that they only show the collection on thin models doesn't sit well with me. But I am conscious of the fact that for years, VS has used thin models to represent their brand, so it's whatever.
If it were up to me, though, Victoria's Secret would change their ads to look more like Dear Kate's or Dove's. Not for my sake, or the sake of the older women, but for the sake of the young teen girls going to Victoria's Secret for the first time to buy their first bra. Or to the young girls simply walking past the Victoria's Secret store. Seeing ads like these encourage the thin ideal, which is already so prominent on magazines, tv shows, movies, etcetera. It's unavoidable.
But I think it's time for companies to just "get it." If anything, the Dear Kate ad makes me more likely to buy their underwear than Victoria's Secret. There's a statistic out there that states that models now weigh 23% less than the average American woman. The gap between the BMIs of the average woman compared to that of models has been steadily increasing for the past decade or so. Models are getting thinner while the average woman is getting bigger. So how does it make any sense to continue using thin women for everything? Doesn't it make more sense to appeal to the masses? Which would mean just using women of all shapes and sizes in your ads. It's really that simple.
I just hope that by the time I have kids, and maybe a daughter of my own, that she won't feel bad about herself because she doesn't look like the models she sees on ads in the mall. Hopefully, by that time, women of more sizes will be represented, and called beautiful in mass media.
A girl can dream.
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