This is a response to Melissa Lui’s Blog Post: For All Shapes and Sizes of Women

I agree 100% with what Melissa has talked about in her post about how advertisements (especially fashion ones) portray a warped sense of beauty to the public. I particularly liked the Levi’s advertisement that she included where all three women were practically the exact same size…not sure how that slipped through editing where the tagline is “hotness comes in all shapes and sizes”. In most ads, women are generally super skinny, with flawless skin, are photographed in perfect lighting often with wind blowing back their hair. Now, if they don’t look good enough after that, they are then photoshopped to someone’s idea of perfection.

As a woman, it was eye-opening to watch this video by Dove, called Evolution of Beauty – Dove Campaign for Real Beauty, where which all women saw that the level of perfection we were all chasing, wasn’t even real. This beautiful woman who walked on the screen at the beginning, was not considered beautiful enough (by whoever was in charge of the advertisement) even after she was completely made up and photographed in good lighting, that she had to be photoshopped before being put out there for the world to see! I remember when I first saw that video years ago, it occurred to me that ABSOLUTE PERFECTION did not exist – and that women should realize their own unique beauty and not strive to meet someone else’s definition.