Body campaigns across the world have brought out both positive and negative responses from social media users.

Dove has been promoting its “Real Beauty” campaign since 2004. The campaign’s goal is to widen society’s definition of beauty from the runway model status to the average woman.

The project has faced some backlash from individuals claiming that though the campaign is overall a positive message, the main goal of Dove is still to sell its products.

Tyler Tomaszkiewicz, junior in sociology, said considering how money motivates people and businesses, it’s hard to say how sincere campaigns like these are.

“I think they’re playing on the want to be beautiful,” Tomaszkiewicz said. “Anytime I see an ad that is doing something like this, I always have some amount of skepticism.”

The store Aerie for American Eagle put up photos in late March showing men of all shapes and sizes.

The ad was thought to be promoting a new line of men’s underwear for the store. American Eagle put out a comment stating that the ad was meant to be a parody and that there is no male underwear line in Aerie.

The business was using it to promote male body positivity and to announce that the store will no longer be retouching photos of its actual male models.

Tomaszkiewicz talked about his own struggle with weight since coming to college for the first time. He said the idea of a positive male body image campaign needed to be more prevalent.

“It’s kind of this dirty little secret that guys don’t talk about,” Tomaszkiewicz said. “We perceive it as unmasculine.”

Jessie Patton, sophomore in interior design, said the reason she believes not as many campaigns are targeted toward men is because marketers associate beauty products with women.

“I think women by nature are more focused on appearance,” Patton said. “The majority of young girls look at models and they become envious because they don’t really have that self confidence yet.”

There are also what some are calling body shaming campaigns on social media.

Project Harpoon was a campaign that promoted thinner beauty. The campaign announced that with body positive campaigns showing up all over the internet, the world is promoting people to stop dieting and exercising.

The campaign takes pictures of plus-sized models, actresses and a variety of other women and retouches them until they are considerably thinner.

Project Harpoon said its goal is to make thin girls feel beautiful too and to promote the idea that skinny shaming is not OK. The campaign made its presence known through social media.

Patton said skinny shaming is creating an entirely new problem, but trying to solve it in this way is not helping.

“The internet has been a great thing, but it has also been socially one of the most destructive things that has come about in the past 50 years,” Tomaszkiewicz said. “A lot of things we were able to cover up back then have come to light, and a lot of people we could just ignore can’t be ignored now.”

Both the group’s Facebook and Instagram pages have been deleted. Instagram confirmed that the page was deleted because it violated the site’s bullying policy.

Tomaszkiewicz and Patton both agree that the idea of beauty is deeply ingrained in society’s mind and that it is one that is hard to shake.

“[Campaigning for] the natural look still kind of keeps our culture as one that cares a lot about looks,” Patton said. “People are still going to be comparing themselves to everyone else.”