"Real women have real curves," Dove tells us, but there are real women without curves and there are real women with real big curves, too. Dove's carefully manufactured idea of "real beauty" strikes me as only slightly less pernicious than the beauty standard it's attempting to criticize—and I'd offer that there's a viable argument to be made that it is perhaps even more nefarious in some ways, since Vogue (for example) merely seeks to represent something (allegedly) attainable, not something "real."
Purporting to represent real women, while excluding everyone who wears a size in the double-digits, creates a fun-house mirror image of reality, not a true reflection. And it would be hilarious, if it weren't so sad, that "Queen of Self-Esteem" Jess Weiner, who's noted as their "resident expert on everything from body image and boys to popularity, friendship, and family issues," has a body shape evidently not considered thin enough to be featured as a "real woman" with "real curves."
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