Aerie’s New Lingerie Campaign Is a Beautiful Smorgasbord of Representation & Inclusivity

Aerie, American Eagle’s brand of lingerie and sleepwear, has been promoting messages of inclusion and body positivity for a while now. Back in 2014, they launched their #AerieReal campaign, pledging only to use un-airbrushed, un-photoshopped images of models in their ads. The move turned out to be a great one, and their sales went through the roof. Turns out women don’t need (or even want) images of unrealistic beauty standards to buy bras. Who knew?

This season of #AerieReal ads go even further, and features real women—as in non-professional models—wearing Aerie products. The representation is kind of incredible. There are women of all sizes and body types, ages, and race.

image: Aerie

The website also a features a number of women with disabilities, chronic illness, surgery scars, and other conditions.

images: Aerie

People with visible disabilities and conditions are so severely underrepresented in fashion and other media. These images, then, are having a big impact on people who aren’t used to seeing themselves reflected like this.

Aerie is proving that outdated images of “perfection” aren’t representative of true female beauty, and they definitely aren’t needed to sell clothes, not even lingerie and bikinis.

(images: Aerie )

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Vivian Kane

Vivian Kane (she/her) is the Senior News Editor at The Mary Sue, where she's been writing about politics and entertainment (and all the ways in which the two overlap) since the dark days of late 2016. Born in San Francisco and radicalized in Los Angeles, she now lives in Kansas City, Missouri, where she gets to put her MFA to use covering the local theatre scene. She is the co-owner of The Pitch, Kansas City’s alt news and culture magazine, alongside her husband, Brock Wilbur, with whom she also shares many cats.

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