Sex, Lies and Photoshop

[AcadieLibre]

I watched this earlier and just posting it so of other are interested they can see it. I will post it and once a few people have seen it maybe a discussion will follow. Unlike some of what I post this is not that long, under 5 minutes. It is about retouching and a law that they are considering in France.

http://video.nytimes.com/video/2009/03/09/opinion/1194838469575/sex-lies-and-photoshop.html

[kat]

Very interesting!

Growing up you hear, "No model is perfect, they take out things." Never do you hear it takes different bodies and things to get that image as well. I think it's time to let the world know that this isn't real.

There are so many images out there for the youth that really do alter what is a healthy and attainable body.

I would love to see a magazine keep it real.

I just can't help wonder how it makes the most beautiful people out there feel that they aren't even good enough..they have to be altered as well. What an artifical life we live in sometimes... :(

[Ben H]

While I understand the concerns, and the fact that these magazines and images are what (girls especially) think of as "normal", making themselves feel abnormal - I can't help thinking that it's all just an extension of show business - it's about packaging, presenting and showing the image you want to show.

Very little these days is "raw". Musicians have their parts comped from multiple takes to get the best one, the guy doing the mix is adding all kinds of sweetners and dynamic interest, the mastering guy is making it sweeter still, and the CD has a front cover of the artist styled in exactly the way everyone wants - all to make a product appealing.

Films manipulate the emotional state of the viewer to tell a story, and all kinds of lighting, sound, music, makeup yada yada is employed to do that.

Fashion - no model rolls out of bed and looks "magazine ready". Actors on a stage are reciting rehearsed lines they've sweated over the delivery of, lines themselves which have been sweated over by the writer to make them say exactly what works best.

The whole point of show business is that it's a performance, it's not reality. It's a fake, a fabrication, and anyone has the right to determine how fake, or how raw, they want their works to be.

I feel for the pressures that, especially women, undergo because of the female body image. But heck, to be honest, I open up, say, any magazine with male models in and I feel fairly, er... "not-quite-model-material". But I can't blame some pictures for me not being model hot. Perhaps it's an educational issue - perhaps society should undergo more of a responsible role to educate people into what they are seeing - because it sure isn't big business that's going to take the lead here...

So I see retouching as simply a form of presentation. Obviously, like many things, including photography, how far someone takes it depends on whether it's appropriate or not - images can be manipulated severely specifically to fradulently manipulate peoples impressions, and how far you feel is acceptable depends on the individual and the particular case.

[kat]

I agree to a certain point with Ben H. Its an extension of show business.

My problem is when you have ads that promote a product and then use an image that is far from reality, I think there should be a limit. Honestly, I know it's all about money and competition but I think these companies should have a bit more responsiblity out there for that.

What comes to mind is Dove. They have that campaign where they use real woman, all ages and shapes and sizes to sell their product. To me, that is more appealing. Although it is downright scary to me that this is actually a campaign and out of the norm.

I just can't help wondering what is real anymore..

[Barefoot]

...perhaps society should undergo more of a responsible role to educate people into what they are seeing - because it sure isn't big business that's going to take the lead here...

Very well said.

[AcadieLibre]

Well I will now hop into the discussion. I agree they should credit the retoucher. I assume every photo I see has been retouched in some way, just not with models but with most photos. How many people here remove objects from a photo? Clone to cover mistakes and all the other things photographers do to deceive and make their photos look better.

I miss why this particular form of retouching is such an issue, do not parents tell their kids that marketing is just deception and they are trying to sell a product or a person.

I also hate the term real women, outside of Post or Pre OP TS's, Drag Queens, all women are real. It is marketing, they lie about everything else to some degree so why would people not just assume off the bat that they were retouched. It is not something the Government should be regulating, if people were so against it the market place would force change, people like to act upset but then why do these magazines keep selling? If people want change they can not buy the magazines or products these models are used to sell, leave the Government out of it, they intrude enough.

[Gem]

I also hate the term real women, outside of Post or Pre OP TS's, Drag Queens, all women are real. I
Since I'm sitting in a lecture right now, I'm just going to add one quick thing and then duck out! Perhaps, a better term for "real" women might be "the average woman."

[kat]

They aren't talking about the basic retouching. It's not just a zit removed. It's a women who gets bigger assest, another set of legs, even a whole new body but her head. That isn't a real woman to me.

I don't mind retouching..but there are degrees to it. If all my photos were of just my head and some other persons body..would that make me me? The woman I am? Or just a figment of my imagination.

First thing that comes to my mind is those ads for diet pills. The before and after shots. As much as we all know they aren't looking that good afterward, they still fool person after person.

I personally don't think it's about educating as much as misleading presentation of products. I think it's wrong. I think it can be harmful no matter how much you think you are educated.

[Ben H]

Is this time to mention the Photoshop Disasters blog?

Go check it out if you want to see some *horrendous* (mostly advertorial) retouching...

Quite funny as well... :)

[kat]

Ha ha..those are hilarious! Love the coat one :p

[kiley9806]

i agree with you kat - it makes me sad that this is the world we have created for our children. i hope that i can instill a sense of self in my own kids, and pride for being just who they are.

[AcadieLibre]

What does an Average woman mean to people? Average in what way? Ever since they started to do modern day advertising they altered images to push on the public what they believe the public wanted and what crap they could sell them. We live in a society where we are bombarded with fake images of beauty. It is up to parents to teach children not to buy into it, not for the government or the companies who job it is to sell products to educate our children, their job is is sell illusions and fantasy and a lot of worthless crap. It must work, people buy into it.

Altering images to make women look thinner, larger breasted, fuller lips, etc. has been being done since print was cheap enough and mechanized enough they could mass produce and market looks, then add photography and you can make everyone beautiful. And it happened way before Digital Cameras and Photoshop were around. It has been going on for almost a century now. It happened prior to that, just not on such a massive scale.

Its fantasy and thats what they are selling. No ones fault but the public who keeps buying these products, these magazines and fawn over these surgically altered people, who have ribs removed to get a nice curve, place bags of saline so they can have bigger breasts, the skin on their face chemically peeled off so they will have more youthful skin. And even after all that they still need to be "Fixed" before the magazine goes to print or the ad is plastered on bilboards around the city.

This is not new, for thousands of years people have done horrid things to themselves to attain what they consider beauty. Recently one company did the campaign where the "Average" woman was Beautiful, it was just a big con job by the advertising company and the Parent corporation. People don't want average, they want the illusion that they too some day can be this astounding beauty. Just look at how many women went to those atrocious Glamour photos that women were flocking to. I still see women who use them and post them as just there every day look. Men are not different, now they get peck implants, butt implants, and a ton of other surgery so they can to be "Beautiful".

If you put an an average person in an ad you try to sell $300 face cream, the odds are you going to be out of business very soon, snake oil salesmen just have larger budgets these days. I think the world had much more serious issues then this, if people choose to be gullible thats up to them, why we live in a free society.

[Greg_Nuspel]

Good news for Canadians, I read somewhere that research shows that Canadians enjoy comedy in advertising more than sex. I wish I would have keep that article.

[Marko]

It is about retouching and a law that they are considering in France.

That is supremely interesting, that law. I'm not sure how i feel about the whole thing. I'm all for crediting the retoucher; but the rest of the law suggests banning websites and make it illegal to promote negative body sterotypes. In theory yahoo, sounds like a good thing -...but putting this in practice brings up some civil liberty issues for me in terms of policing or enforcing anything. If I am a website owner they could take me down for showing a retouched image..that's what it's sayin'.

Personally I think I'm fairly unaffected (in terms of my own body image) by the stuff, but I can easily see the effects on today's kids. Really, when I was a kid it wasn't that bad; retouching was done but it wasn't as extreme. They would retouch the prints and the negs to fix up blemishes - but they didn't have the today's easy peasy tools. They could not pull in a woman's waistline to absurd porportions as easily. This can be done in less than 1 minute in P.Shop and it is done to all the images we see (or the vast vast majority of them)

If every picture we see is indeed fake and indeed affects our self image, it's a problem, No? Some parents are busy. Some kids are stubborn, it's hard for parents to be totally on top of something as pernicious as glamour marketing. It's everywhere on 10 different levels; all fake, all motivated to do only one thing - separate you from your money via the deceit in the marketing. The problem, is the way it's done - unfortunately it does imo bash many a young person's self image. So for me it can be seen as a health issue or a mental health issue. And because of that, the government can get involved and maybe they should.

I'd be looking to get better answers than banning websites though - I think I'd be for 'mandatory credit of the retoucher' as a first step. :twocents:
Thx for listenin' lol - Marko

[kat]

Marko you wrote it exactly how I feel about it..but soo much better than how I word it!! :p

[edbayani11]

as advertising people say, 'truth in advertising'