Wendy has a great point about Dove’s and Nike’s new campaigns using real women, not the airbrushed stick models. What do we need to do to ensure that this becomes the norm of advertising, instead of the exception?

I love these campaigns! I think it’s so cool to finally see women the way we really look, rather than the way the fashion industry would like us to think we should look like.

I wish someone had been doing advertising like this when I was a teen. Perhaps I wouldn’t have starved myself like I did, or loathed the way I looked because my breasts were so small, my thighs so much bigger and my "Brooks" (my mom’s side of the family) hips and waist were so prominent. —- My mom had the perfect sweater girl figure. But she was a teen back in the 30s and early 40s, when the sweater girl, hour-glass figure was not only appreciated, but idealized. By the time I was a teen, the waif look was in, and waif-girl I am most certainly not.

I’d love to see the profits of Nike and Dove soar in the wake of these new campaigns. In fact, I’ve decided that I’m going to by Dove from now on, to show my support. I know, I’m just one person, and my $2 doesn’t’ really make much of a difference. But I hope that there are other women out there like me who are tired of the messages our culture shoves down our throats on a daily basis that only stick-thin, no-butt, big-boobed women have all the fun, the men and the life worth living. Perhaps if we all add our $2 — or $60+, in the case of Nike — we can make a difference big enough for Wall Street and the fashion industry to sit up and take notice.

Dove even has this cool thing on their website called "Real Beauty", which includes a self-esteem fund to help raise awareness of how body-related self-esteem is affected by the messages young girls receive through today’s media.

So please, go out and buy Dove. Go out and buy Nike. Support these companies who are pioneering a new, better way to advertise their products.