Dove Canada’s recent ad campaign by Ogilvy Toronto used reverse psychology of sorts to inform those graphic designers, photo editors and art directors, who are responsible for copying, pasting, shrinking, deforming, whitening images what Real Beauty really is. In order to get straight to the source of the problem, said editors, Dove packaged their message to in the form of a Photoshop Action, a downloadable file that applies an effect with a single click. They created their “Beautify” Action that appeared to add a skin glow effect and planted it on websites that these creatives already visit. However, it reverted the image they were applying this “glow” to back to its original pre-altered state. Genius….though I suppose a bit misleading. Ok, ok a lot misleading.

Advertisements, magazines, “get skinny” websites, and social media networks like Pinterest are often the sources of what we as females, and males for that matter, view as beautiful. It’s everywhere! We are suffocated daily by these images and sure, we understand this celebrity or that model are apart of this fantasy world when we’re flipping the pages of a magazine or scrolling endlessly on our computers. But we are often left standing in front of the mirror naked going “wait, where did that dimple come from and when did that zit decide to rent space on my face?” It’s bonkers, and it makes me mad. Hmph.

I think it’s important to teach the girls of today about these visual distortions of reality and how there are tools out there that make it easy for people to manipulate a photo with one click, just one. One. The more companies, magazine readers and young strong women and girls speak up the better this epidemic will cease to exist. A perfect example of taking matters into her own hands is eighth-grader Julia Bluhm, who after hearing dancers in her ballet discuss how they view their bodies, set to change Seventeen Magazine’s use of photoshopped images in the publication. She started an online petition after hearing dancers in her ballet class complaining about their body image by started in online petition in the spring of last year and early June 2012 she had more than 80,000 signatures and a waving white flag from Seventeen. Victory! A new policy at Seventeen was created and now a campaign surrounds its “Body Peace Treaty,” which pledges to “never change girls’ body or face shapes” in published images.