An Imperfect but Real Advertisement Can Be More Appealing: Face Truth, Swimsuit Ads that Doesn’t Hid
The occurrence of stretch marks is natural and inevitable for many women; however, we never see stretchmarks on models in the ads and women always appear to be smooth and flawless, without ever displaying any skin imperfections. The reason for this is because these photos have been processed before they are released.
Recently, Britain e-commerce ASOS and U.S. retailers Target recently released a few swimsuit ads, a group of photos that gave up Photoshop and stopped covering their models' stretch marks.
On ASOS's website, there are many photos that can be seen clearly showing the stretch marks on the hips and waist of different models, whether it's a skinny model or a plus-size model. Target doesn't use traditional models, the four women pictured are dancer Megan Batoon, pro skateboarder Lizzie Armanto, model and body activist Denise Bidot, and TV host and model Kamie Crawford. Like ASOS, the four ladies show their real bodies. The advertisement skipped the steps of retouching the figure and removing the stretch marks. Many women are thrilled when they saw these new ads, and the topic of the two ads was hot on social media.
From these two ads, I can feel their honesty, not hype. I don't have stretch marks, but I think I'll be proud to wear a bikini if I have stretch marks. I won't feel embarrassed when my shirt is wide open nor will I be shy in the locker room. Comparing to traditional refinement fashion photography, ordinary customers are more comfortable with seeing natural photos with real models.
There are a lot of advertisements now in the name of real people, not everyone is worth believing. We need experiences, investigation, and judgment. I'd rather believe in imperfect real models.
Work Cites
Bain, Marc. “A new crop of swimsuit imagery is embracing stretch marks, not hiding them”, Quartz. https://qz.com/1021767/asos-now-has-swimsuit-ads-that-embrace-stretch-marks-instead-of-airbrushing-them-out/, 5th July 2017.
Feldman, Jamie. “Stretch Marks Star In Target’s New, Unretouched Swim Ads”, Huffpost, https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/target-swim-no-photoshop_us_58d11ea3e4b00705db528865, 21st Mar. 2017.
Gwynn, Simon. “Consumers like 'real people' ads but prefer a laugh, research finds”, http://www.campaignlive.co.uk/article/consumers-real-people-ads-prefer-laugh-research-finds/1445068, Campaign. 20th Sep. 2017.
Image Credit:
Target website
ASOS website
