Jesse Epstein, the filmmaker who made the terrific short documentary
“Wet Dreams and False Images,” is back with a
video op-ed on the NYTimes.com. In it,
she asks whether American magazine editors should be required by law to disclose how much they have retouched images in their magazines. Well, should they?
"(Lucky magazine) preferred her over this model, so we went ahead and pieced together a new girl." (click image to watch the video on NYTimes.com)
This guy retouches photos and tells about it in the video.
So why does it even matter whether magazines are showing retouched, fake women? Here’s why: When the female body is edited beyond recognition (or created) by a photo retoucher, and women and girls see that as the ideal, chaos (and oh, self-harm) ensues for those women and girls. Examples:
- cosmetic surgery carrying huge health risks (including death)
- over-exercise (or “exercise bulimia”)
- unhealthy, risky dieting
- disordered eating behaviors (that may or may not mean a person has an eating disorder)
- eating disorders like anorexia and bulimia (which, by the way, can cause death)
- general, all-consuming obsession with appearance that takes our attention away from truly important parts of our lives
Know what I’m saying? Check out the video and let us know what you think.
– Jennifer
March 13th, 2009
By now, we’re used to hearing that the ads we see every day are somehow digitally altered. Unfortunately, that’s not always our first reaction to the barrage of taut thighs and doe eyes. Kudos to a Berlin culture jammer for explicitly (and creatively!) reminding us of the Photoshopping of subway billboards. This person has been adding stickers of Photoshop windows to the original ads to demonstrate that we are looking at the product of hours of retouching. Check out some examples here.
So what do you make of it? Would seeing this on your morning commute make you stop and think? Personally, I think it’s a great idea, and a good way of interrupting the images we tend to simply accept.
Given an advertisement and a blind eye from the authorities, what would you do?
-A.I.
January 15th, 2009
Lest we think that the images we see in ads are the gospel truth, here comes the blog Photoshop Disasters, featuring the most egregious blunders in digital manipulation. It features the so-called flawless retouches that accidentally defy the laws of physics and/or human anatomy. Not only is this blog absolutely hilarious, it serves as a reminder of the extent to which every ad we see is edited.
My heart goes out to Ms. Summer. However, you will see much worse on the site: extra hands, people with eight-pack abs but no bellybuttons, even my favorite here (may be NSFW). It’s interesting to note that, although PsD is a site that is open to all types of ads, photos of Frankenstein women dominate the blog. I definitely recommend visiting this site as an affirmation that, no, no one actually looks like that.
-A.I.
June 28th, 2008
[Update 5/9/08: An article in AdAge today reports on a statement from Dove and the retoucher mentioned in the New Yorker article discussed below. See updates throughout this item. -J.B.]
Ah, Photoshop retouching, how you pain us, how you confuse us all. Reading a very amazing (and very long) article in the New Yorker (May 12, 2008 issue) today, I learned about the techniques and life of master photo retoucher Pascal Dangin. I encourage About-Face visitors to take the time to read the entire article, either online or in the magazine itself.
[The Dove ads: Lots of retouching? Really? Did you have to break our hearts?]
[Update: Phew -- turns out there may not have been much retouching after all.]Â
My rose-colored glasses were cracked by this statement about his work on the Dove campaigns. From the article:
I [the article's author] mentioned the Dove ad campaign that proudly featured lumpier-than-usual “real women†in their undergarments. It turned out that it was a Dangin job. “Do you know how much retouching was on that?†he asked. “But it was great to do, a challenge, to keep everyone’s skin and faces showing the mileage but not looking unattractive.â€
Retouchers, subjected to endless epistemological debates—are they simple conduits for social expectations of beauty, or shapers of such?—often resort to a don’t-shoot-the-messenger defense of their craft, familiar to repo guys and bail bondsmen. When I asked Dangin if the steroidal advantage that retouching gives to celebrities was unfair to ordinary people, he admitted that he was complicit in perpetuating unrealistic images of the human body, but said, “I’m just giving the supply to the demand.†(Fashion advertisements are not public-service announcements.)
Of course they had some retouching done — but a LOT of retouching? Wait a minute. Aren’t they supposed to be “real” women?
[Update: Dangin says he did not work on the "women in their undergarments" ad, said, "In my experienced opinion, based upon what I have seen, it does not appear that the women had been retouched."
Turns out that he did work on the Dove Pro-Age ads, which were photographed by Annie Leibovitz. Per the AdAge article mentioned above:
In her statement, provided by Unilever, Ms. Leibovitz said, "Let's be perfectly clear -- Pascal does all kinds of work ... and only does retouching when asked to. The idea for Dove was very clear at the beginning. There was to be NO retouching, and there was not."]
In the article, Dangin comes across as an artist, but he’s still manipulating the public image. Then there are tons of other photo retouchers out there who, at the urging of their advertising and magazine clients, shave off too much hip, remove too much bulge, and create a Frankenstein’s monster. Case in point:
[Some bad image manipulation.]
The resulting image can have one of two effects: Girls, boys, women, and men can see the image and 1) perceive it as real, assuming that it is the way a beautiful woman should look, or 2) see it as a grotesque, malformed person. We make the choice, and the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty makes the point well: we often can’t tell whether an image is retouched. (See the irony here?) Will we continue to believe our eyes and try to get ever more “perfect”?
I don’t believe that photographers should never use Photoshop on their photos — everyone wants a pimple removed in their family picture for posterity or their MySpace or Facebook page — but completely changing a body to within a centimeter of its former self? And selling us a literally unattainable form of beauty we are told we must fit into? That’s where I draw the line.
- J.B.
May 8th, 2008
Watch this Dove Campaign for Real Beauty ad and see if it doesn’t change your perspective.
Continue Reading January 11th, 2007
