Marketers and PR professionals for beauty brands have to walk a fine line between promoting their products without setting impossible standards for women who don't have a coterie of assistants to attend to their appearances. Their jobs just got tougher with the recent leak of unaltered photos of Beyoncé at a shoot for a L'Oréal in 2013.
The Beyoncé World, the self-proclaimed "biggest Beyoncé fansite in the world," published the unretouched shots of the singer on Tuesday. According to CNN, The Beyoncé World removed the photos after Beyoncé fans on Twitter and elsewhere criticized the site.
For Beyoncé, this is a minor blip for a widely admired performing artist and celebrity. It's a different story for beauty brands, who should brace themselves for similar leaks that will demand public statements as well as more careful examination of the messages they are sending to women with their images of impossibly flawless beauty.
Dove has notably confronted this issue over the past 10 years with its Dove Campaign for Real Beauty. Mashable reports that for this Sunday's Oscars broadcast, Dove will air a commercial about the emotional damage resulting for negative tweets about women's physical appearance. The ad is part of Dove's #SpeakBeautiful campaign.
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