Yesterday we were invited to a discussion on real beauty with Dove and to view the launch of their newest real beauty campaign. When it comes to beauty, things aren’t always how they look. Dove believes that beauty should be real and should not be faked. Their newest campaign Real or Retouched has been created from this idea and exposes the truth of extreme digital retouching.

According to research by Dove, 55% of Canadian girls under the age of 14 have expressed that they feel pressured to be beautiful. The negative impact of these thoughts can be detrimental to young girls starting with them “checking out” of daily life including not wanting to go to school or participate in gym class. These girls are comparing themselves to images that are totally unreal, but many girls and women alike have yet to realize that almost all of the images of perfect models and celebrities that they are bombarded with in today’s society are almost 100% retouched in someway or another. From a simple touch up to remove dark circles to an extreme change of the shape of someones body it all impacts us and tells us that our real self is not good enough. To add to this, only 3% of Canadian women are comfortable enough calling themselves beautiful, this news is devastating to us.

Dove believes that by exposing the truth of extreme digital retouching that it will help women to understand that images that may be perceived as normal are not. Dove doesn’t want us to just know about the issues of retouching, they want women to start internalizing the information being given to them and do something about it. The first step to creating this change is to start the conversation! Dove’s new campaign will do just that when launches across Canada April 26th. This campaign will invite women to join into the conversation online. These conversations will be sparked by the following images that Dove will be releasing.

These campaign images trick your eye, when they are upside down they seem like you are looking at an attractive woman but as soon as they are flipped upside down you are shocked to see that they have actually been extremely retouched. This has been done to show us how extreme retouching can go so easily unnoticed and distort a woman’s perception of beauty. This happens everyday when advertisements trick us with the creation of impossibly perfect models. Visit the Dove Facebook Page to join in the conversation to tell Dove what you think! Visit Dove.ca for more tools and resources.

Some of the beautiful women at the event, Karyn from Killer Kurves, Valerie from I’m Charming You, Lena from Listen to Lena, Jen from Shedoesthecity and don’t worry, the photo is totally untouched! All four of us in our natural beauty!

Lena from Listen to Lena looking glam for the cam after being interviewed for Dove’s real or retouched campaign.

Be sure to join Killer Kurves on Facebook.