Are you beautiful?

As a people photographer part of my job is to make people look their absolute best. I love showing a new client their portraits and hearing them say "Wow, we look great. I didn`t know we could look like that". I know it makes them feel good about themselves and gives them a little self esteem boost which we can all use from time to time.

I, however, struggle with the amount of retouching I am willing to do to a portrait and especially to the people in the portrait. I feel our society has placed an unrealistic expectation on women to look a certain way. We are bombarded everyday with images that have been highly retouched presenting a much different view of the world than that that which was captured. After running across this short clip created by Dove it inspired me to share it. I am all for making ourselves look good but the message this clip shares is an important one. Ladies we all come in different shapes and sizes and we can all be beautiful in our own ways. We need to quite letting Hollywood and the men that run it dictate how beauty is perceived. Share this clip with any young girls or women you know and let them see just how distorted our perception of beauty can be...

Kudos to Dove for creating an advertising campaing like this!!