Airbrushing The Thin
We all know that OK Magazine lied about Britney’s weight loss, and Glamour airbrushed America Ferrera. And now there’s another problem—or is it a problem? Conde Nast has admitted to airbrushing ultra-thin models to make them look larger.
[There is] a trend towards presenting less “extreme” images of thinness and of enhancing figures. “Where models are looking particularly gaunt, magazines are saying, ‘We can’t have that – fill out their chests…It is now deemed just as negative to be too thin as too fat. Everyone is scared of being highlighted as the magazine or label that promotes very thin girls, so they are being a lot more careful about the images they present”…
Nicky Eaton, the head of press and PR at Condé Nast, which publishes Vogue, GQ, and Glamour, also confirmed that images of models were enhanced to make them appear fuller-figured. “There have been cases where models are booked way ahead of a shoot and then they turn up two months later looking less healthy and perhaps a bit underweight. We wouldn’t be happy showing them that way, so it is then that we would need that person to look a little bit fuller.”
I think it’s a little diningenuous to pretend that this is the motivation. Remember when Kiera Knightley was airbrushed in the chest? Feministing agrees, and points out why this is dangerous:
At its core, I don’t believe this type of Photoshopping is about deflecting criticism that models and celebrities are dangerously thin. I think this is about perpetuating an even more unrealistic beauty standard than unattainable thinness (something I never thought possible): the message is that you should be super, super skinny, borderline skeletal, but without any of the things that come with the territory, like jutting hipbones or small boobs. So even the skinniest celebrities STILL require Photoshopping to meet this standard. You can be less than a size zero and still lose this game. And that’s pretty frightening.
So what do you think? Is airbrushing okay as long as we’re making the models look larger? Or is airbrushing in general just reinforcing a totally unattainable beauty ideal?
Posted by mo pie
Filed under: America Ferrera, Cameron Diaz, Celebrities, Feminism, Keira Knightley, Magazines, Media
I don’t understand the contradicting message that we should emulate these celebrities because they are gorgeous, rich and thin but then put out the message that they are not good enough.
Why are we being force fed these people that don’t fit the mold either.
Let us have some everyday, smart, honorable, respectable women to put on a pedestal and let’s just not give a shit if they are airbrushed at all.
But, for the record I think it’s stupid do it either way. They are either beautiful ‘enough’ to be on the cover or not.
It’s ridiculous. I totally agreed with Feministing on this issue (which is a rare thing). All airbrushing does is perpetuate the myth of the perfect look, and reminds us that none of us, no matter how thin or fat we are, will never ever be perfect enough…but we should still keep trying anyway.
*headdesk*
These media need to get real, and start showing people as they really are, as well as showing more realistic looking people and a wider variety of body types.
Intellectually, I know that women in ads and magazines are airbrushed within an inch of their lives. However, I haven’t read a female-oriented magazine in a long time and I don’t watch much tv. While I was on the bus the other day I picked up a discarded women’s magazine.
I was appalled by the women in the ads. They were so airbrushed they looked plastic (or like porcelain). Skin folds and creases around bent elbows and eyes had been airbrushed out and smoothed over. It was terrifying.
I think that presenting these distorted images of women (and men!) is very dangerous because it leads to disconnect between real bodies and desireable bodies. I think there’s long been a problem with presenting women who had the bodies of small children (skinny, no hips, large eyes, small (but sensuous) mouth) except for their giant boobs. Erasing the negative aspects of too-thin bodies (jutting bones, lack of butts and boobs) is bizare.
Thin women can be beautiful, just as “average” or “healthy” sized women and fat women can be beautiful. But these magazines are not showing women. They are showing sexual ideals that can not be achieved, along with tips on make up and hair styling and expensive clothing that we can spend money on to try to achieve that perfection. And it’s sick.
That’s ridiculous! Cameron Diaz works hard to maintain her gorgeous, athletic figure and they just go airbrush it all out? Disgusting!
I have to admit that I’ve never really been able to relate to the concept that images in magazines set a standard for everyone. After all, 99% of the population do not look like models and never will, and yet most of us non-model-types will go on to lead fulfilling lives nonetheless. Nobody looks at the stunts in an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie and complains that they set an unrealistically high expectation of athleticism that regular people can’t live up to, and airbrushing seems to me like an analogous concept.
I think any airbrushing is awful. It sets people up to an unattainable standard, and it’s totally disrespectful to the people being airbrushed. It is saying, “well, you’re not good enough, but we’ll tweak your picture so that you are.” It makes people believe that there are people who actually look like the airbrushed people, but there are not.
Um, yeah, especially with that example- where they’re not making her BIGGER, they’re just smoothing out the hipbones so they don’t jut…
Airbrushing SUCKS.
I agree with One Bite and Fat Girl. They are not really making the girls any bigger. They are just airbrushing the “negative aspects of too thin bodies” as One Bite put it. And may giving them fuller breasts. It is just another way to assalt the female body and make everyone feel less than perfect!
What I really hate about the airbrushed photo is that they lightened the entire picture. Now Cameron’s eyes look really creepy. The natural definition and contrast in her “real” face are beautiful. The Photoshopped version isn’t. Sometimes, no matter how hard people try, they can’t create anything that even slightly compares to the natural original.
Personally, I seriously dislike photoshop/airbrushing in general. I think the whole idea of taking a photo of someone and then changing the way they look is ridiculous. What’s the point of making an image of someone, to remember them by or whatever, and then altering so that they don’t even look like themselves??
No matter which way you’re changing them, to be thinner, fatter, smoother, more tanned or any other variation of a theme, it’s just a strange and counterproductive thing to be doing.
Viva au naturel I say!
I used to work as a writer in retail advertising (many years ago), and I think the thing that is disturbing about all the airbrushing is that it’s much, much more pervasive than you think it is. Ads for mid-priced clothing from a chain retailer? Not only are they Photoshopped to remove the things you’d expect — nipples showing through T-shirts, bulges in men’s underwear, blemishes, wrinkles from the clothing, etc. — but they also remove any extra flesh that might show in a bra ad (which is natural if you’re not a skeleton), they tuck in the waist, all that. So it’s not just fashion spreads in Vogue where we are seeing unrealistic images, it’s the local department store chain, too.
What frightens me even more than that is the response you get when people see the originals. I had a conversation with a buyer once who turned in a 42DD bra (or close to it, can’t remember exactly now, but it was a bra for a full-figured woman) as a sample for the photo shoot, and when we actually used a model who was the right size for the garment, the buyer was aghast at how “big” she was. WTF? I asked her, at that point, if she expected us to try and have a 36B model wear the item, and she shut up. But it illustrates how unrealistic people’s expectations.
Oh, and I remember an art director telling me that for one swimwear catalog she worked on, EVERY model had breast implants — and they were all in their late teens and early twenties. So screwed up.
Another thing related to this: Quotes in Magazines supposedly by celebrity women who eat huge, high fat meals.
I know that there are thin people who can eat like a rhino an gain nary an ounce. But there’s something unfair about celebrity women with these perfectly trained and conditioned bodies asking us to believe that they tuck into a 12-ounce steak three times a week.
“Or is airbrushing in general just reinforcing a totally unattainable beauty ideal?”
This.
I’m not going to get into the fact that they only airbrush on the boobs, and more hip curves to the stick straight girls, while they shave America’s and Jennifer’s (H) – and Jennifer’s(L) – and Jennifer’s (G/A) – hips down.
I’m not even going to get in to the girls on Feministe who just insisted that their lightening her up was just a “photostatic color adjustment” instead of just plain RACIST, since a woman of color – yes, folks, she is Cuban – cannot prima facie be Barbie. (And don’t try to argue with me on this one, graphic arts folks; I’ve spent a couple of weeks on this issue in another context; I’ve been a WOC – while also “part white” my whole life, and I will not be trying to hear it.) Skipper, perhaps, but not Barbie. Who is of course the only girl worth being.
*facepalm*
I give up. Is there real estate available on the moon?
littlem, I also noticed that all of the airbrushed photos were lightened to make everyone look lighter-skinned. It’s incredibly, disturbingly racist.
I’m leaving my own comment before reading the others, and realize that what I say might be controversial.
This is a topic that gives me pause. The business side of my brain says, “Well, it’s all just marketing, and they are all just selling a product, so of course they are going to make a product look as appealing as possible, regardless of whether that means making it fatter, thinner, tanner, taller, whatever.”
It isn’t that different than food stylists who color-correct, glaze, position, light, and trim food in order to make it look amazing before a photo shoot. The difference, of course, is that FOOD is not a PERSON and therefore this has societal implications other than just “don’t eat rotten bananas,” which is just common sense.
It’s the same concept though. Make the product / cover / whatever look more attractive so you sell more copies, therefore can sell more advertising, therefore grow your business and your brand.
The NON business side of my brain says “that’s ridiciulous, why on earth would they photoshop these perfectly wonderful looking people — and frankly, why photoshop ANYBODY… we’re all human, flaws and all.”
What I think would be interesting is to do a test where they have a control group of NON-photoshopped magazines and compare sales lift or decline to a the balance of the print run.
But that’s just the marketer in me talking, and unfortunately it might yeild results we hate, and then we’re back to square one. My guess, however, is that nobody will put down a copy of People because Keira Knightley’s breasts are too small.
At the end of the day, my answer is that they are a business, and are driven by whatever makes the most business sense, whether it is offensive or not. The only offensive behavior that will cause them to change is if we all stop buying magazines and seeing movies and watching TV based on this practice.
Beauty sells, simple as that.
It’s not fair, but life is not fair.
What annoys me is that guys also look at those airbrushed celebrities and then see “real” women with imperfections. We, real women, do not stand a chance.
They will always be looking for that thin blonde sex-symbol.
What I’ve heard from guys is that being thin is number 1 requirement. If she has crooked legs, bad hair, bad teeth (or no teeth) – doesn’t matter as long as she is thin.
Everything else is a bonus.
Life is SO not fair.
This is going to sound crazy, but I wish they’d just find people who actually came up to their ridiculous standard. Seriously, it would may or may not be less damaging to look at someone real who came up to that impossibly high standard of beauty, but it would be a step in the right direction. At least they’d be real. And it shouldn’t even bee too hard if they’re having to go to people who’s bones don’t stick out; they have a larger pool of candidates right off the top.
Its not hard to make people look good without airbrushing, all you need are proper clothes and some good concealer.
Ms. Ingrid, I really think that most men compare you to what they see in the street every day, but most people have the idea that if you are fat you are lazy, stupid, etc, etc. So if a man, who has absorbed those same stereotypes especially as they apply more to women, was looking for an intelligent, energetic partner, who would he be able to cross off the list immediately? And, if he’s just looking for a good lay for the night, we have both fat and STDs associated with “dirty.” Is all this true? Of course not. The great thing about stereotypes is that, even if they actually do fit a population as a whole, they never, ever, fit individuals.
littlem, everything you say is TRUE!!!!! But what’s also disturbing is that many of these celebrities dye their hair blond (J-Lo, Eva Mendes), slim down their “assets” (J-Lo again), and basically make THEMSELVES look more white, because that is what’s considered “attractive.” Add to that the airbrushing, and it’s it’s like their heritage is being wiped away. It’s sickening!
I think of J-Lo and how she looked in “Mi Familia” compared to how she looked once she became a huge star, and it just makes me sad.
I HATE airbrushing. You know what? We all get pimples, and wrinkles, and bra bulge, and under-eye circles, and bad hair days. I say, let it all hang out!
(And, BTW, if you want your models to be bigger? HIRE BIGGER MODELS!!!!!!!)
“[T]he message is that you should be super, super skinny, borderline skeletal, but without any of the things that come with the territory, like jutting hipbones or small boobs.”
I want to disagree with this — the fact that anyone is fair game for airbrushing means that NO ONE is perfect enough. Not the fat, the thin, the brown, OR the white. I think it’s actually a liberating concept to think that NO ONE can attain this superhuman standard of beauty, and to understand that ANY picture you are looking at may be altered. Even if it’s of a woman who makes $15 million per movie, and not because she’s that talented an actress, either.
http://www.iwanexstudio.com/
this company has the exact same Cameron Diaz photo in their “portfolio” section as well as some other eye opening look at photoshop airbrushing. Sigh.
Now if we can only teach the droolboys that …
I checked out that Keira Knightley link and came across two more.
In this one, Liz Hurley freely admits that she would never appear in a bikini without airbrushing:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/showbiz/showbiznews.html?in_article_id=560875&in_page_id=1773&ICO=TV_SHOWBIZ&ICL=TOPART
In this story’s headline, a British actor is described as the “porkiest babe magnet in town.” However, the article doesn’t talk about his appearance at all (unless I read too quickly); it just lets the pictures do the talking. Note the freedom with which he’s dancing. When was the last time you saw a larger woman dancing with such freedom (and without being thoroughly dressed down in the accompanying article)?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/showbiz/showbiznews.html?in_article_id=561439&in_page_id=1773
Oh, and can anyone tell me how to embed links when posting so they don’t stretch so far across the page? Hmm… I just remembered tinyURL. I’ll use that next time.
Is a 12-ounce steak actually a huge high-fat meal? I’d have said it was normal to slightly large.
If Diaz is a person of color, then everyone from south or east of Scandinavia is of color if we’re just talking about skin color.
There are times when Photoshop/airbrushing are necessary. Sometimes there are funky shadows or the tone of the picture is funny, or someone has a huge zit or is popping a nip in the original. Or sometimes the person looks fantastic but there’s something funky going on with their hair. I think those are the times when there is ABSOLUTELY nothing wrong with Photoshop.
I do have a problem, however, with changing something fundamental about a person’s appearance. If I were the photo editor, I would never remove a mole or wrinkles or alter someone’s figure. If the subject asked me to fix something I ordinarily would have left, I would (especially if they were the one paying me), but on my own I wouldn’t change anything outside of fixing the occasional blemish or photo gaff.
Also, I don’t think lightening the shot is inherently racist, usually it’s just about picture quality. In this case, I don’t agree with the editor’s decision to lighten it. I think the shadows bring out Diaz’s features and they disappear in the lightened version. She’s a uniquely beautiful woman, her features don’t necessarily fit the usual mold of “pretty,” and I think lightening it and de-emphasizing them does a disservice to her. I don’t think it was an attempt to make her “whiter” though. Photos get darkened all the time too. I can see wanting to make changes that would make her jeans pop away from the background (seriously, who photographs on a blue background when the model is wearing jeans? Duh?) but they could just as easily have done that by altering the background color instead of the levels of the whole photo.
That’s my Photoshop-loving-geek take on it.
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I have stopped considering print media to contain depictions of actual human beings in all cases. All of the images have been manipulated, so I consider it all a kind of Pixar version of reality. Therefore, it doesn’t bother me.
I see friends of mine on television commercials and movies on a fairly regular basis and NEVER recognize them at first viewing, even when they’re in realistic make-up and have had no special hair style changes. The camera does not capture real life. And now less than ever.
I just love how the article mentions that “market research” shows that women in the US want to see a size C cup or bigger on all the magazine covers. “Market research” is also what causes things such as New Coke debacle, keeps good musicians off the radio stations, and apparently dictates that most US women, no matter what size they may be, won’t buy a magazine unless the woman on the cover has big boobs. IMHO, “marketing research” is BS.
I think that its disgusting. They should find a naturally pretty girl, and NOT airbrush ANYONE! EVERY SINGLE PERSON has at least ONE imperfection, and it should stay that way! I mean, people go to anerexia and bulimia because they want to be as skinny as models in magazines. BUT, what if those people arent really that skinny, or just WHAT IF they are too skinny to even be shown normally because they are bony? Most of these models shown on covers of magazines arent even real. They try for perfection just to make people buy the products. Its just so sick.