Dove: We Didn't Airbrush Our Lumpy Ladies

Dove is doing its best to bat down accusations that the beauties of its "Real Beauty" campaign were less than entirely real.

A retoucher who worked on the campaign, Pascal Dangin, was quoted in this week's New Yorker seeming to imply that now-iconic images of "lumpier-than-usual" women were actually heavily altered. But now Dove says the New Yorker's account was misleading, and Dangin and photographer Annie Leibovitz both agree.

(By the way, is there any photo controversy Leibovitz isn't in the middle of?)

Dangin says he only worked on one campaign for Dove, and not the one the New Yorker implied he'd done, and also insists his changes were limited to color correction and dust removal.

Here's the full statement from Dove.

Statement from Dove about The New Yorker Article

Dove's mission is to make more women feel beautiful every day by widening the definition of beauty and inspiring them to take great care of themselves. Dove strives to portray women by accurately depicting their shape, size, skin color and age.

The "real women" ad referenced in recent media coverage was created and produced entirely by Ogilvy, the Dove brand's advertising agency, from start to finish and the women's bodies were not digitally altered.

Pascal Dangin worked with photographer Annie Leibovitz (Ogilvy has never employed Mr. Dangin on the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty), who did the photography for the launch of the Dove ProAge campaign, a new campaign within the Campaign for Real Beauty. There was an understanding between Dove and Ms. Leibovitz that the photos would not be retouched - the only actions taken were the removal of dust from the film and minor color correction.

"Let's be perfectly clear -- Pascal does all kinds of work - but he is primarily a printer - and only does retouching when asked to. The idea for Dove was very clear at the beginning. There was to be NO retouching and there was not," confirmed Annie Leibovitz, commenting on the ProAge campaign.

Mr. Dangin responded, "The recent article published by The New Yorker incorrectly implies that I retouched the images in connection with the Dove "real women" ad. I only worked on the Dove ProAge campaign taken by Annie Leibovitz and was directed only to remove dust and do color correction -- both the integrity of the photographs and the women's natural beauty were maintained."

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