Retouching

[poliphilo]

Alesha Dixon had a really good show on BBC 3 last night- all about the retouching of photos in glamour and fashion magazines and how it makes young women despair of their bodies.  Did you know that every image of every woman in every glossy magazine has been worked over- her pimples removed, her hair untangled, her eyes brightened, her figure adjusted, her legs lengthened? Well I suppose I did, but only at a semi-conscious level. Mostly we still think that if it's a photograph it's got to be true- because as some idiot once said, "the camera doesn't lie". Well the camera may not lie, but the computer does- and Alesha showed us just how its done and how far it goes.  As an extreme example of what can be achieved one of the evil magicians waved his wand over an honest picture of Alesha's wrinkly (but handsome) old mum and turned her into a peachy-skinned 17 year old. And not actually so extreme, because these tricks are regularly performed on elderly celebs and the results are everywhere.  Alesha challeged the glamour and fashion mags to run an unretouched picture of herself on their covers- but of course the editors were all in meetings when she rang.  In the end the Mirror's Celebrities magazine- a supplement to the Saturday or Sunday paper- picked up the gauntlet and ran just such a picture- and very attractive it was too. Alesha is a phenomenally beautiful young woman; to think that her image needs tidying up-  well, it's crazy!

Of course there's nothing new in the blanding out of images of women. Before there was digital retouching there was airbrushing and before there was airbrushing there was Thomas Gainsborough. And women have always punished themselves in an attempt to live up to the look they're being sold. Todays young women get boob jobs (we were shown one of them on the operating table- I had to look away- it was like watching a chicken carcass being stuffed); in the 18th century- Gainsborough's era- they used to poison themselves with slatherings of white lead. What's new is the overwhelming presence, the inescapability, of the propaganda of the beauty industry. You know what? I think the magazines that service it- that run the images- which means all the glamour, fashion and celebrity magazines aimed at women and girls- are worse than top shelf porn. The porn magazines only tickle lust (and is that so bad really?) whereas these others spread self-hatred and despair.

Bodies: we're stuck with them. We want them to reflect the beauty of our inner beings and they don't (though Alesha's comes close) and there's nothing we can do about it- though God knows we try.  Down the years I've tried to educate myself to see the beauty in what's actually there- to get rid of the ideals that have been planted in my head and enjoy the quirky, the individual, the characterful, the jolie-laide- but its like dragging a barge upstream whilst swatting away mosquitoes. Our culture- in a degraded parody of the Grail Quest- is mad for an unreal, unrealisable beauty- and bombards us with its dogma and cult images. How does the individual stand against it? I don't really know- you just grit your teeth and put your head down and push on forward- but well done, Alesha, for trying!

Comments

[aellia.livejournal.com]

I meant to have watched it,so thanks for the review.
I've never understood what "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder" really means. I'm thinking about that now.
The Bone Diggers should be good tonight
x

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I'm really looking forward to Bonekickers. It's from the team that Made Life on Mars- which is a pretty good sign.

[dakegra.livejournal.com]

ah, I meant to watch that. I'll check it out on the iPlayer gizmo.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I thought it was excellent.

[butterscotch711.livejournal.com]

If only the iPlayer didn't lock out non UK residents!

One of my friends studies photography and he has a professional camera. He spends a lot of time taking portrait photos of his friends, and all my favourite photos of myself are from him. He uploads them on Facebook and tags me, and I download them to use elsewhere, or even to send my family.

Recently I found out that he uses Photoshop to airbrush all these photos. He showed me how he does it with a photo of his mum - not only did he take away her wrinkles, but he changed the structure of her face.

I don't look at photos of myself very much, and I don't even properly look at my reflection much. It was really weird to find out the image of myself I have been seeing is a computer-edited one.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

These guys are only doing what portrait artists have always done. I've seen photo portraits by Cecil Beaton from the '30s which have been edited quite outrageously.

I'd be interested to see your friend's work.

[bodhibird.livejournal.com]

The porn magazines only tickle lust (and is that so bad really?) whereas these others spread self-hatred and despair.

I think you're so right about that. Erotic imagery can sometimes be degrading, to men as well as women, but it doesn't have to be, whereas the flaunting of the unrealizable ideal is bound to do harm.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Alesha surveyed the men's glamour mags as well as the fashion glossies and found that the men's mags clean up their images far less. They may brush out skin blemishes but they won't alter body shape.

Broadly speaking men want women who look like women- that is to say, with curves and a bit of flesh on their bones- whereas women want women (to quote one of last night's participants) who look like adolescent boys.

[bodhibird.livejournal.com]

That's the funny thing: All these idealized images are pointed at women, targeted to what they want or are supposed to want. Men don't want a woman who looks like Keira Knightley, but women are supposed to try to look like that--cute face, no breasts or curves at all.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

It's weird isn't it?

Whare does this aesthetic come from? Who decided that stick-thin = beautiful? It's a relatively recent thing. Through most of Western history women were supposed to have curves. Look at Marilyn. That's only 50 years ago, but if she were around today she'd be unemployable.

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

There was a skinny flat-chested period in the 20s too. Flappers. Then there was Twiggy in the 60s. I think she was the first of the skinny modern models.

The really unreal thing these days is that the "ideal" woman is supposed to be skinny with hips like a boy yet have huge boobs. That's just not natural!

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Neither natural nor attractive.

The girl last night who had the boob job was obsessed with Victoria Beckham. Alesha interviewed her boyfriend- and I though we'd find out that maybe he'd been pressuring her- but, no, he was as perplexed as everyone else. Like most men he finds Victoria Beckham grotesque.

[jfs.livejournal.com]

There's a theory that it comes out of the fashion houses because thin women are easier to cut clothes that hang well for. So - if you're a fashion designer and you want to make your life easier, demand stick thin models who will show off your clothes to their best advantage.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I've heard that one too. I'm not sure I'm convinced.

Not that I have any better explanation.

[red-girl-42.livejournal.com]

I have also heard that the fashion houses want people to pay attention to their clothes and not the models, so they started choosing stick-thin models because they weren't sexy, but somewhere along the line the public started thinking this is how we are supposed to look.

[bodhibird.livejournal.com]

Maybe C.S. Lewis was right, and it's demonic intervention. He had Screwtape take credit for changes in fashion and notions of female beauty.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I'm with the guy who said- on being asked if he believed in devils- "Of course, I know quite a few of us."

(Actually I believe in the other sort of devil too- only I'm not sure they're bright enough to invent something as complex as the fashion industry.)

[arielstarshadow.livejournal.com]

Maybe this is the beginning of how we stand against it - by bringing to light the lies everyone thinks is the truth.

What's even more disgusting about those magazines is that when women destroy their bodies to live up to the ideal, they are attacked for being anorexic...and if there are models and actresses who have a healthy weight, they are laughed at for being "fat." I'm reminded of the recent runway model who got completely ravaged for being fat on the runway. Yet these same papers scream because models are too thin. The same papers love to post eating disorder claims for too-thin actresses, and then excoriate Jennifer Love Hewitt for having curves.

Women are ridiculed for both, and it's horrible.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

When you come down to it, what we're seeing is raw misogyny. And oddly enough, much of this misogyny is coming from women.

Some people in the business are waking up to it. Alesha had praise for Dove- the soap and beauty products manufacturer- which recently ran a campaign featuring "real", unretouched women of all ages and races and shapes. It met with a very positive response from the public- mostly along the lines of, "phew, at last!"

[frumiousb.livejournal.com]

I've always admired Jamie Lee Curtis for making a similar point several years ago:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/04/28/48hours/main551362.shtml

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

That's an excellent article. Thanks for the link.

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

I teach PhotoShop at work and I use this as an example of what can be done. It's not often you see the before picture, but in this case it's available here.

This is just an amateur playing around, so heaven knows what the professionals get up to.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Oh wow!

I greatly prefer the unretouched image. That's a wonderful face. Actually, she looks a bit like my sister.

[jfs.livejournal.com]

I teach Photoshop too, and use this site to demonstrate retouching. I like it because the editor doesn't just retouch photos of women (though they are there) and zooms in on certain areas to show just how much work goes into getting a photo ready for a magazine.

Edit: malformed HTML

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Some of this stuff is extraordinary. Looking at that picture of the guy sitting in his messy room with the guitar, you'd never guess it had been tampered with.

Thanks for the link- it's a real eye-opener.

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the link, that could be useful. Some of those, like the guy in the messy room, are the sorts of things I'd do myself. But with the photos of women, I mostly preferred the "before" pictures.

My new lawn mower icon is an example of what I do when I play with PhotoShop, but I don't think other mowers are going to get an inferioriy complex because of it. :)

[wyrmwwd.livejournal.com]

The really bad stuff happens with 52 year old me has to complete with 25 year olds for jobs. As a new college grad, they are expecting a 25 year old. Then, when wrinkly fat old me comes walking in, that is often the end of the interview. It's a real problem.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

And experience and maturity count for nothing. Mad!

[wyrmwwd.livejournal.com]

My experience and maturity is telling me that I am going to have to start being conscious of this if I am going to be able to complete.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

We are told there it is illegal to discriminate because of age, but it happens all the time.

(Back when I was young, before such things were more hidden, I was told before I applied for a grad school library job, that the man in charge only hired beautiful blondes, neither of which I was. I didn't get the job, either.)

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

but its like dragging a barge upstream whilst swatting away mosquitoes. Our culture- in a degraded parody of the Grail Quest- is mad for an unreal, unrealisable beauty- and bombards us with its dogma and cult images.

I've always thought that British films more often gave parts to fine actors who didn't necessarily look glamorous or better-than-life, regular, normal-looking people, whereas American movie stars are so perfect that no one can ever look like them in real life, and therefore their careers tend to end at forty when they get their first wrinkles that can't be glossed over (because they are two-feet wide on the screen).

Sad. Sad that we think that way, and discouraging for women especially who leave the theater feeling frumpy, dumpy, ugly, and poor. With regular unshiny white teeth and graying hair.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I was watching a tribute last night to Anthony Minghella- and someone told the story of how the American studio that was backing the English Patient wanted to replace Ralph Fiennes and Kristin Scott-Thomas with Mel Gibson and Michelle Pfeiffer. Minghella dug his heels in and found funding elsewhere. I think this illustrates your point.

I find it hard to tell the latest batch of Hollywood stars and starlets apart. They all- especially the female ones- look the same.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

They all- especially the female ones- look the same.

I read that Bo Derek's husband used to check her over daily for imperfections.

Natalie Portman, who is 26, said she was planning to do other things when she "wasn't pretty enough for Hollywood" anymore. That'll probably be in about ten years.

[red-girl-42.livejournal.com]

One thing that always irks me is when I see movies with female characters who are supposed to be ugly, but they are played by women who aren't ugly at all, they just aren't Uma Thurman.

A great example is Janeane Garofalo, who always seems to get stuck in the "ugly fat girl role," even though she's neither ugly nor fat.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Yes, as in Ugly Betty. That girl is so obviously gorgeous under the glasses and braces.

[silent-mouse.livejournal.com]

I think about it sometimes - what if I have been this fake "beauty-" and fashion-conscious. My life probably would have been much harder. Luckily (and I say it with due amount of irony) my mother chose to tell me again and again that I was not pretty at all (as in "You're so ugly, such a pity, - because you have been a pretty baby! What did you do to yourself?" Yes, my mother is a charming lady..) and so I have decided to be smart instead. Not that I am ugly. Apparently. I have almost convinced myself of that, but I really don't care about it, and that's such a relief.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Smart is so much better than beautiful.

I was talking to the pretty little girl next door and she was saying how ugly she is. I think we could be raising a whole generation of children who don't think they're good enough. some of them will go your route (hurrah!) but others will spend their lives consumed by self-loathing.

[silent-mouse.livejournal.com]

I wholeheartedly agree! I would never have traded brains for any amount of beauty.

I'm afraid the majority of self-loathing children will go down the common road of diets, cosmetic surgery and low self-esteem. I often see the contradiction between the messages that are sent to teenager girls in the media: "you should love yourself as you are," but also the good old "you should be pretty, thin and glamorous." So now they have guilt trips both ways because if you are on a diet you don't love yourself as you are, and if you're not on a diet, you're not trying hard enough. I honestly don't know how the teens can stand it.

Still wouldn't recommend my mother's way, though :) It borders on emotional abuse, which I'm pretty sure is not very legal :)

[seaslug-of-doom.livejournal.com]

Could you tell me, please, the title of that show with Alesha Dixon? I want to try and find it on YouTube or as a torrent. Thanks.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

It was called Alesha: Look But Don't Touch. And it originally went out on BBC 3.