New Aerie Ad Campaign Features “Normal” Sized Model [Video]

Aerie has won the hearts of many women after announcing that it would not retouch its models a few years ago, and now Aerie continues to assert its portrayal of "real" women with a new ad campaign. The teaser video shows 19-year-old Barbie Ferreira, a size 12 model and representative of "curvy" women everywhere.

Regardless of what you consider to be a "normal" or "average" body type, Barbie certainly isn't the waif that many fashion companies use in their ads. In the video, Barbie explains, “Not being retouched in the images is something that’s very important to me—people knowing that, that’s what I look like without anyone’s perception of what my body needs to look like.”

Barbie has received some backlash since the video's release, but she's taken to Twitter to silence the haters.

According to Refinery29, Jen Foyle, Aerie's global brand president, said, “We cast Barbie because she’s got nothing to hide, she’s strong and beautiful—she embraces her real self, which is the spirit of the Aerie Real message.”

With the rise of plus-size models (and the eternal trend of stick-thin models), it can be tough to find models who are in-between these two categories, but Barbie proves that they are out there. Hopefully more models like Barbie can show the next generation of young women that you don't have to weigh as much as a leaf to be beautiful.