Does it matter if Dove's real beauty ads were retouched?

Beauty is in the eye and all that, but I rather thought the point was that societal and/or, and perhaps more importantly, industry 'standards' were imposing a rather uncomfortably high bar for what 'beauty' is. One that few can aspire to, let alone attain. Hence... be yourself, and let true beauty radiate (if with a few enhancements such as soap, scrubs, mascara and makeup... hey what do I know? Shaving foam and after shave is the extent of my facial regimen). So my take was that you don't need to 'cheat' with all you describe above as an individual, and 'the industry' (inc. media) is being pretty shallow and exclusive by using a small minority of what they deem 'perfect' models to portray an 'ideal'. Hence imposing 'rules' on shapes, textures, etc. None of these women were unattractive by any measure to this subjective male's eye, so one does already wonder what the 'cut off' was. Can anyone honestly say there were not rejections for being too [inset possible reasons for exclusion here - I wouldn't dare these days to even hint] or not enough [ditto]. Hence, having in all likelihood already gone though this selection process, it would appear certain other attributes were then either played up or down... to taste, on top. Which, IMHO, still rather cuts across the bows of 'real beauty', especially in the manner promoted, and leaves a suggestion I would thought with this disclosure some women might still find a tad 'us' vs. 'you'. Speaking as a 5' 7" guy, if some bozo men's brand started banging on how they were no longer using 6' 4" Eloid adoni (is that the plural), yet found they'd boosted some good looking 5' 6" type to 5' 10" because, well, 'short don't sell', I'd say they deserved all the vilification they got if it was a core aspect of the complementary PR. FWIW, some 'perfect' models I see in the glossies seem about as real as a plastic doll thanks to the smoothing process, and whatever 50,000 year old bits & bobs in my brain know it... and register them about as alluring as a bottle of Fairy Liquid as a consequence, so everything is still relative. Spoken as a true Morlock I know. I liked the campaign, and felt they could have done all they needed with resorting to this aspect, which has rather come back to haunt them.

Very well said.  I think that what you wrote is spot on