American Eagle Outfitter’s lingerie brand is introducing Aerie Real. The company is no longer using supermodels or retouching their photos for advertisements, similar to Dove’s Real Beauty campaign introduced in 2004.

The ads highlight the model’s tiny imperfections, including their tattoos, freckles and dimpling with their slogan plastered across the spreads reading, “the real you is sexy.”

This is definitely a step in the right direction for the fashion industry. Having shopped at Aerie for years, I admit that I wish I could look like their Danish model, Nina Agdal, who is also on the 2014 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue cover. But the reality is that I probably never will, and I’m learning to accept that everyone has their flaws.

Only 4 percent of females in the world have a model figure, emeritus professor of communication and telecommunication Bradley Greenberg said.

Attempting to look like the supermodels on the covers of magazines can be harmful to your self-esteem and feed your insecurities.

Journalism professor Karl Gude, who used to be an art director at Newsweek, said Aerie knows its target audience is approximately 15 to 25-year-olds. These buyers want to believe their ads are doing something honorable, which could make their new campaign a cash cow.

“Ethically, do they give a shit? I doubt it,” Gude said.

Although the models aren’t retouched, they still don’t necessarily represent the norm. It’s a step in the right direction for the fashion industry, but you need to be skeptical of everything in the news. Deception is as easy as a few clicks in Photoshop and voilá, flaws disappear.

Gude recently got into an argument with an art director on Facebook after he shared his criticism for Flare magazine’s retouched cover photo of Jennifer Lawrence to make her appear thinner, according to Gude’s article about the ordeal in Huffington Post.

The art director claimed that retouching photos is a necessary part of the “painstaking process” that a fashion magazine goes through to create the perfect cover photo. In response to the art director’s claim, Gude turned to Photoshop. He crudely retouched a photo of the weighty art director to make him look thinner.

You go, Gude. Not only was the art director wrong in arguing that it’s acceptable to retouch an already stunning actress, but he is among many of those in the advertising business that are the culprits of causing young women to feel pressured to look thin.

Society is obsessed with looking perfect. We put supermodels on a pedestal and praise them by throwing millions of dollars at them for eating a cube of cheese and a celery stick for dinner. They choose to put their lives in jeopardy for a superficial and degrading job.

One out of every 100 young women between 10 and 20 are starving themselves and many more are bulimic, according to Gude’s article.

If you give in to your insecurities, you can cause serious bodily harm. At a lesser level, you may take up a new restrictive diet.

My roommates and I tried this last year and it lasted for three days. We tried to “cleanse” our bodies by only eating certain vegetables and abstaining from every other important food group. While it makes you look thinner in the short-run, it often times leads to gaining more weight in the long-run.

In high school, I remember seeing one of my curvier classmates crying in the bathroom as she ran into a stall to throw up. What kind of society pushes us to the point of hurting ourselves in this way?

The idea that you need to look a certain way to be accepted by the world is a misguided path. The media has a great deal of influence on us subliminally, it’s important not to believe everything we see through mass media.

I wasn’t entirely flattered by my reflection in Aerie’s fitting room mirror, but the company’s sticker pleasantly reminded me that beauty is something that shouldn’t be retouched in real life. Hopefully their campaign can do the same for others.

Loving yourself instead of idolizing a computer-generated image is what understanding real beauty is all about.

There are resources at MSU that inspire the same kinds of ideals Aerie does. Spartan Body Pride and Reflection Revolution both advise students to appreciate their body types and disregard the unrealistic standards advertised in the media. They meet, discuss and challenge their ideas about body image to establish a positive atmosphere for students in East Lansing.

Spartan Body Pride will host “Love Your Body Week” at the end of the month for National Eating Disorders Awareness Week where they provide uplifting activities to get involved with loving your body. Look for their list of upcoming events on their Facebook page.

Cayden Royce is a journalism sophomore. Reach her at roycecay@msu.edu.