Stacy Nadeau (Dove) Update, August 22, 2005
Updates on one of the people in Dove's "Campaign for Real Beauty." From the Shreveport Times and the Clarion-Ledger:
Stacy Nadeau recently posed for provocative shots with other curvy women wearing only their panties and bras.
The photos, which since have been plastered on billboards, on the Web and in magazine ads nationwide, were life-defining for the 20-year-old DePaul University student.
"I was willing to show any part of my body -- bare it all -- in order to make women feel good about themselves," says the perfect size 10 who likes the curves of her waistline. "My body is actually attainable for most women. Not every woman is meant to be a size 0 or 2, so I think women should embrace what they have in the size they are."...
[A]ccording to the National Eating Disorders Association, the average American model is 5 feet 11 and weighs 117 pounds, while the average American woman is shorter and plumper at 5 feet 4 and 140 pounds. Indeed, the latest estimates are the average size of a U.S. woman is 12 or 14....
Some say the campaign still uses narrowly defined examples of beautiful women and it doesn't go far enough to combat negative self-perceptions among women.
Bob Garfield, an Advertising Age magazine columnist, recently wrote of the women in Dove's ads "sizes 6 and 8 notwithstanding, they're all still head-turners ... which is part of the problem. Hips or no hips, they represent a beauty standard still idealized and for the overwhelming majority of consumers, still pretty damn unattainable."
This dove tails (heh) into an article from the Saline Reporter:
Voted "Most Likely to Leave Saline and Never Come Back" by her graduating class, 2003 Saline High School alum Stacy Nadeau has spent this past summer in New York City, Washington, D.C., San Francisco and Los Angeles, among other big cities and their suburbs.
But not on a cross-country vacation. On billboards, in subway stations and even on the sides of buses as a part of Dove's Campaign for Real Beauty....
Nadeau was selected from a pool of women who attended an open audition last fall in Chicago, where she is a student at DePaul University. The six women chosen to participate in the campaign were flown to New York City to be photographed in December 2004.
"I was more excited about going to New York," Nadeau said, explaining that she was initially skeptical about attending the audition when she first learned about it while working at her part-time job at a tanning salon. "I was unaware that the message [of the campaign] was going to be so big."...
Following a similar campaign that Dove launched last spring in the United Kingdom that was met with great success, the campaign's promotional tour began on June 23 after an unveiling of a large billboard in Times Square in New York City, which Nadeau cites as her favorite part of the summer.
"The biggest perk is when people meet us and thank us and shake our hand with tears in their eyes," Nadeau said, adding that many women see reflections of themselves in the models....
"I don't think any of the six models understood how big this was going to take off," Nadeau said.
But she remains unchanged by her sudden celebrity status. "It's cool to see yourself on TV, it's cool to see yourself on a billboard, but at the end of the day, if I can help someone feel good about themselves, that's what makes it worth it."
A former DECA chapter leader and Student Council president during her days at SHS, Nadeau will be returning to DePaul, where she is studying industrial organizational psychology, in a few short weeks to begin training to be a residential advisor this fall....
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