This article is so full of WIN, it hurts. Excerpts…
Henry Farid, a Dartmouth Professor who specializes in digital forensics, put it quite succinctly: “The more and more we use this editing, the higher and higher the bar goes. They’re creating things that are physically impossible. We’re seeing really radical digital plastic surgery…big breasts, tiny waist, ridiculously long legs, elongated neck. All the body fat is removed, all the wrinkles are removed, the skin is smoothed out.” But you don’t have to be a professor to see this impossibly high bar being raised higher by the minute.
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We are in the midst of a beautiful reality that is ours once we recognize it and grasp hold of it.And studies show that when we can learn to love ourselves – despite the beauty ideals we are surrounded by and cannot obtain – it shows! Recent studies show us that girls who don’t like their bodies or appreciate them – regardless of their actual appearance – become more sedentary over time and pay less attention to having a healthy diet. And that makes sense. If you think you’re gross and worthless, why would you take care of yourself?
On the flipside of that study, research has found that girls who feel good about themselves and respect their bodies – regardless of what they look like - are more likely to be physically active and eat healthy. They are less likely to gain unnecessary weight and they make healthy lifestyle choices far into the future. How we think about our bodies and our beauty has everything to do with how we treat ourselves. When we can learn to love and respect ourselves, regardless of how our bodies appear, it shows! We must learn this now and we must begin to teach the little girls in our lives how beautiful their realities are and can always be.
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Here’s an outrageous idea: What would happen if confident, happy, beautiful women decided to forego painful and expensive anti-aging procedures, breast lifts and enhancements, liposuction, all over hair removal or tanning regimens? How could that change the way their daughters, students, friends, nieces and coworkers perceived themselves and their own “flawed,” lined, real faces? Their own varied-looking and perfectly functional breasts, behinds, thighs, arms and abs? How could simply owning and (treating kindly and speaking nicely about) our so-called “imperfect” bodies affect not only our own lives, but those over whom we have influence? Is it possible to slowly but deliberately change the perception of these “flaws” as something to shame, hide and fix at any cost to something acceptable and embraceable in all their human, womanly real-ness?
We say yes.
Photo via Creattica.com - Visit the website listed below for the before & afters I’m referring to.
Thought this was intensely interesting.
Photo-retouching is an art (I have friends who do it for a living) but it’s really important to know that the photos you see in magazines & on billboards are NOT what these people look like in real life.
The women in this portfolio are all naturally STUNNING, are wearing makeup, had their hair done and are dressed by experts to highlight their natural features. Their before pictures are nothing to sniff at: these are above average ladies for sure. BUT seeing their afters can give you great insight into how we go from beautiful to ‘perfect’ in images, and how that might affect your sense of what beauty is.
No one is perfect, and while there’s no denying these are lovely ladies to begin with, it really makes you think: “why we need to go from naturally stunning to ‘perfect’, when perfection doesn’t exist?”
From removing muscle (Cameron Diaz & Beyonce), to evening out skin tones, to making breasts appear even (seriously, check out the boobies. Almost all of them have been retouched to appear more symmetrical), to removing freckles, beauty marks, scars, bruises, dimples and more - there’s a lot that goes into the final product.
See the portfolio here.
Visit this website, which has been kind enough to post the before and afters of their work. http://www.iwanexstudio.com/. Click on ‘Portfolio’ and then scroll over the image for the ‘befores’.
(This is meant solely for the purposes of highlighting before & afters, it’s NOT an attack on the artists that are paid to do it or this company - they do great work and their jobs are a reflection of a much larger issue - not the cause of it. It’s up to us to inform ourselves and the people around us. We make target change from the inside out).
What do you think?
“Maybe She’s Born With It… Nah, I’m pretty sure it’s fotoshop”
This commercial isn’t real, neither are society’s standards of beauty.
This ad is a tongue and cheek look at the makeup/beauty commercials we see on television EVERY DAY. The only beauty secret that magazines can count on, is digital re-touching. Everyone has flaws, and celebrities are no different (the commercial highlights some pre & post celebrity photoshopping that the celebs themselves released).
If you’ve ever wondered why on earth we’re so obsessed with perfection, and why even the most gorgeous women in the world are still insecure about their bodies, THIS is why. Everything is retouched. Everything. Even photos you wouldn’t think need to be.
Full post here with behind the scenes: http://jesserosten.com/2012/fotoshop-by-adobe
via Business Insider
Procter & Gamble has agreed to never again run an ad for its CoverGirl mascara because it used “enhanced post-production” and “photoshopping” to make eyelashes look thicker than they were in real life. P&G agreed to the ban even though it disclosed in the ad that the image was enhanced.
The move is the latest in a series of baby steps that U.S. and international advertising regulators have taken to ban the use of Photoshop in advertising when it is misleading to consumers.
Note: not talking about the bodies, but rather the clear and obvious distortion of them. In some cases, the distortion is rather horrific.
Support a photoshop free world with your dollars: save them instead of spending them on unrealistic ideals. While it’s great to be anti-photoshop in your words and posts, magazines will continue to give us what we’re telling them we want with our actions.
Cover models are so heavily photoshopped even THEY don’t recognize themselves. And in MOST cases, the model (or celeb) is not in control of the final product, as is the case for the image above.
FHM, December 2011
Probably the worst case of photoshopping yet is completely removing the clothes of a cover model. Here, Veena Malik claims that when she posed for the magazine she wore a bikini, hot pants and a thong, and although she was topless, she was never fully nude. She’s now suing the publication for $2 million. Good for her!
Photo: jezebel.com
See the rest of the gallery here.
For Your Self-Esteem: Photoshopping IS Real, the End Result ISN’T.
It’s important to realize that what you see isn’t always real. I find it incredibly hard to remind myself that the images I see in magazines are photoshopped and edited by professionals because what I do see, I want to believe is real. I want to believe it’s achievable. Why? Because I find it beautiful, attractive, and coveted. I fall into the media trap just as millions of others do. We have to become aware and willing to look at the beautiful models and images and say, “This is a product. This is a message. This is a lie. This does not have to be me.”
via body-peace
