entréesprofilamisparlezmémoires
Body Image in the Media: The story of Stacy Nadeau and the Dove for Real Women Campaign
Tuesday, April 6, 2010 @ 11:00 AM

In 2005, a campaign that promoted natural women, curves and all was introduced into the media. The campaign that sparked controversy, raised eyebrows, and received unprecedented national media was Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty. Six real women, who had never modeled before, were chosen to participate.

Stacy Nadeau was one of the six real beauty models chosen to support the dove mission: to make more women feel beautiful every day by widening stereotypical views of beauty and inspiring women to take great care of themselves. Nadeau spoke of her life changing experience as a Dove model and how her experience taught her to accept her own beautiful self.

Nadeau shared her journey of how she became a model for the campaign. Nadeau was a sophomore at DePaul University when she first was confronted with her opportunity. It started as an ordinary day, walking to work with a friend. While walking, she turned around and saw a woman walking very close to her, but thought nothing of it. “I Live in a big city, I see weird people all the time,” she joked.

When she got to work, that same woman walking behind her, asked to hang a model audition flyer at her work, and told Nadeau that she should audition. “Maim, what about me says model to you?” she exclaimed. Nadeau thought nothing of the request, and shook the thought from her mind, being a model was nothing she had ever planned to do.

When Nadeau came home from work that day, her friend confronted her saying “You are going to be really mad at me,” her friend had pretended to be her and made an appointment to attend the photo shoot the next Tuesday at 3p.m. After talking to her mother, she decided to go to the audition.

“You are going to be really mad at me Stacy, you have to go to the audition in your underwear,” her friend confessed. Reluctantly, Nadeau showed up, was there for 30 seconds, only four pictures were taken. “We will never speak of this again,” Nadeau warned her friend.

The rest was history, the next thing she knew, she was in New York for two 12 ½ hour photo shoots. These photo-shoots marked the first time anyone has ever taken real women sizes 2-12 and put them out in an ad campaign. The idea for the ad campaign was inspired by the major study, The Real Truth about Beauty: A Global Report, which validated the hypothesis, that the definition of beauty and become obscured and unrealistic. The study showed that 98% of girls did not feel confident enough to call themselves beautiful, and that 81% of women in the U.S. strongly agree that the media has created an idealistic and unobtainable standard of beauty.

Nadeau showed pictures of women in magazines, who are meant to represent “real beauty”, these women were sickly thin, flawless and genetically impossible to look that way. She also showed pictures of men as well, these men all had six packs, and ripped muscles. Nadeau shared that a friend had once photo-shopped an 18 pack onto a model. “For some people it is not in the cards for them [to have abs]” she said.
After the campaign launched, the dove real women billboard landed right next to a Victoria’s Secret billboard in Las Angelis, where it could catch the most attention. Attention they received, in extraordinary amounts.

“The first to call was the today show,” Nadeau said. She even had an appearance on Oprah, Despite the fear of her “jiggle” being noticed, her and the five other models walked on stage and were interviewed in their underwear. “We knew with Oprah it would make a really big splash,” Nadeau said.

After that day, the Dove girls realized how inspirational and life changing their campaign was to the men and women of the U.S. After the show, they were to do a meet a greet and pass out gift bags with Dove products, they had 15 bags, hundreds came to see the girls.

Many of the people came to say thank you, it is about time, but there was a woman who stood out in particular. A woman, hysterically crying hung to the girls and repeatedly said thank you to them. “No problem,” was Nadeau’s response. “You do not understand, you girls have single handily saved my daughter’s life,” was the woman’s response.

The woman’s daughter was battling severe anorexia and could not have any media. Her mother saw the ad, and zeroxed copies her daughter and the entire hospital was covered with the ad. The daughter was inspired, “I am sick of this,” she said, “If these women can show their bodies fat and all, I can beat this.” The girl did beat her anorexia; she gained over ten pounds after hearing about the campaign. “We changed her, we made her better,” Nadeau said.

Nadeau’s experiences were not all positive however. There were many critics of the campaign that were disgusted by the campaign. The Chicago Sun Times called the models fat, ugly, that if he saw us at a bar he would run the other way. He added, “To my favorite Stacey Nadeau the next time I see thigh that big, the better be in my KFC Bucket.”

This article sent hundreds of women and men to retaliate against the writer, and a public apology was given. One commented saying “She looks like me, my sister, my mother my grandmother, we’re beautiful.” Another said, “I live in the building next to you, I see you come and go all the time, P.S. You are no God’s gift to women.”

Nadeau offered advice on how men and women can find their best self, most fit self, and most mentally healthy self. Her advice was to be a friend to yourself and stop fat talk. She wants people to do what makes them feel beautiful, and to have a productive day.

She also wants women to stop the, “Girlfriend Poker,” or the, “I’ll take your arms and legs and raise you a butt,” as she put it. This does not help self-esteem, it lowers it. “What you think and what you say affects you, “she said.
She also wants women to think about their relationships, “surround yourself with people who build you up.”