Never Perfect Enough

Do you remember the Dove ad where they took a regular woman and "improved" her?

Shapely Prose, in They've got implants to put in, they've got implants to remove,* discusses retouching star photos:

According to the Telegraph, fashion magazines now not only employ the familiar trick of skinnifying and plasticizing unacceptably fleshy actresses and models, but also use the magic of Photoshop to plump up other women whose images might be unacceptably thin now that concerns about the effect of ultra-thin models is finally maybe starting to be taken just a little bit seriously. Not seriously enough to use bigger models, mind you, but seriously enough to photoshop a little more T&A on the ones they do use.

They have a link to a company that does the retouching.  As Shapely Prose continues:

That portfolio is a glorious example of the impossible beauty standard: Kelly Clarkson has been shrunk, while Julia Stiles has been filled in; Beyonce’s hips have been redrawn to erase a muffintop, while Eva Longoria’s hips have been curved up and out. Looking through all these photos, I get the eerie feeling that they’ve stolen flesh from one woman only to add it to another. This is the quintessential operation of the beauty “ideal”: it is just that, an idea, sold to us as something to strive for not despite but because it is impossible. Even the women who look like that don’t look like that!

To look at the portfolio, click here (caution, site is flash-heavy), then click on Portfolio.  Go down to the two rows of photos and click on one to see the retouching.  When your mouse arrow is over the photo, that's the un-retouched photo.  The retouched photo appears when you take the mouse arrow away from the photo.  Click on the photo again to finish viewing. 

The ones that remove all wrinkles and skin irregularities, to me, leave the people looking Stepford.  I was very tired the first time I looked at it so I have to admit I amused myself by going back and forth and watching body parts pop in and out (particularly the 5th one on the second row).

The sad thing is they all look great without retouching, but after seeing the retouching, it's difficult to see the originals the same way again. 

It makes me glad I'll never be famous!

* From "When I Was a Boy" by Dar Williams which deserves its own post someday so I won't put it on here.

Comments

[Carrie K.]

Since when did it become horrible to look like a human being? All of the retouched photos look like plasticene mannequins.

[M Light]

They do! And they look so much more interesting in their more normal shots.

[moominpapa]

OK - two things.

1. This explains why you just don't see movie star or model type look-alikes wandering around the mall. They're aren't any.

2. I looked at the last photo, in the lower right hand corner. This was the face in the center of the ad on the home page, too. Very pretty girl with freckles, etc. I noticed that they not only removed ALL character from her skin, but they straightened her nose! I was immediately reminded of a man standing in front of a mirror, with a quarter, the edges rubbed with graphite, rolling the quarter down the center of his face to divide it so he could compare the sides. His theory was that the criminally insane have symmetrical faces, while the rest of us don't. He was just checking...

[Shannon]

Wow.

[Crissy]

I just don't understand why they are compelled to make those already rail-thin women even smaller.

[M Light]

Maybe because women are supposed to vanish altogether? That's the feeling this sort of thing gives after a while.