In the world of fashion, most ad campaigns feature stick thin models and the latest fashions. While this does the job of showing off the clothes, it makes fashion at times feel unapproachable if you’re not a size 0 and 8 feet tall. While retailers like J.Crew, Anthropologie, and Urban Outfitters have felt the wrath of the consumer for not showing them real women, the #AerieReal campaign has made huge strides.

Starting in June 2014, the brand promised their customers that they would no longer be retouching or using supermodels in their ad campaigns. This campaign has been showing real women in their clothing and lingerie and has been highlighting that real women are sexy too. This was an unprecedented move in the fashion industry. Prior to this campaign, no other brand had ever used models that had not been retouched. Magazines like Seventeen have promised to use Photoshop less but no one has ever been able to forgo Photoshop all together.

While Aerie’s decision to show real women makes fashion more inclusive, it sends a much stronger message to the brand’s key demographic. The brand is geared towards impressionable women from ages 15 to 25. Women in this demographic are in high school and college and are highly influenced by the media's perception of body confidence more than any other group of women. While this won’t mend the complicated relationship between a woman’s body and her confidence, it is certainly a step in the right direction. Showing girls with real curves encourages them to feel confident in their own skin.

The brand is finally seeing rewards for their bold move. In a year of tough sales for chain brands like Gap and J.Crew, Aerie has seen sales rise 20 percent. Instead of showcasing their product like on Victoria’s Secret angels, using real women sets them apart in the market as a more approachable brand. The head of the Aerie line, Jen Foyle said that the key to their success is simple. They decided to listen to their customers. They have departed from the exclusive vibe that stores like Abercrombie have capitalized on for so long.

Social media has allowed the brand to engage with their customers allowing their customers to be heard. Foyle also mentioned “We see statistics that it really is more females than males who are using image-sharing sites like Facebook and Tumblr and Pinterest, so that means for the first time in history, we have primarily females who are leading a mass conversation.… That to me is really why there’s such a hunger now for authenticity and for representing the female experience in a more genuine way.”

With Aerie experiencing such growth for doing something so simple, it led me to wonder if other brands will start doing the same thing. It would be a refreshing move that would only encourage more body positivity in young girls, an age group that really needs it.