American Eagle’s Lingerie Line Aerie Is Beating Victoria’s Secret At Its Own Game With Its #AerieREAL Campaign

by Chaitra Ramalingegowda · July 16, 2015

After Lane Bryant’s #ImNoAngel campaign celebrated women for their own bodies rather than peddle an unrealistic view of how a woman’s body is supposed to look like, it’s now American Eagle’s lingerie line Aerie doing something radical. Aerie’s #AerieREAL campaign features non-airbrushed images of its models, with tattoos and all, eschewing the ideal supermodel look with the size zero figure.

This campaign of Aerie’s is netting it huge dividends if its sales numbers and positive responses it’s garnered are anything to go by. Since the lingerie brand embraced the #AerieREAL campaign a year and a half ago, women have flocked the stores in droves, driving up the sales nearly 10 percent.

Image source: Instagram

In fact, people and women in particular, have liked Aerie’s campaign so much that it’s close to beating out the famed lingerie brand Victoria’s Secret at its own game.

In a statement last year, Aerie’s Chief Merchandizing Officer Jennifer Foyle said,

“The purpose of ‘aerie REAL’ is to communicate there is no need to retouch beauty, and to give young women of all shapes and sizes the chance to discover amazing styles that work best for them. We want to help empower young women to be confident in themselves and their bodies.”

Another key person connected with the campaign, Jenny Altman, the brand’s Style and Fit Expert in 2014, told Good Morning America,

“We left beauty marks, we left tattoos – what you see is really what you get with our campaign.”

Image source: Instagram

If you see the models used in the #AerieREAL campaign ads, you can see their tattoos, you can see their slightly rounded bellies, and also the numerous cute freckles that cover some of their faces. Aerie does really follow the dictum, ‘what you see is what you get.’

If such positive body image messages through campaigns keep igniting like wildfire among all the clothing brands, then the day won’t be far off when all of the Angels from Victoria’s Secret would have to hang up their wings and go looking for work elsewhere! 😛

Take a look at some of the pictures from Aerie’s Instagram account – they are as REAL as you can get:

We need more such body positive ads to destroy the ‘perfect’ and ‘ideal’ body images that have been peddled for long by beauty and fashion brands. Women don’t need another voice telling them how to look, what to wear, how much to exercise, and what skin color they should strive for. Most of them do enough self-flagellation to last them a lifetime. No, thank you.

Bravo, Aerie! Go #AerieREAL!