I’d Prefer Unretouched Photos Of Women
October 8, 2009 / 1:07 pm • By John Hawkins
This image has spurred yet another debate about touching up photos of women.
In recent years an ongoing debate has brewed over advertisers and fashion magazines using photographs, particularly photographs of women, that have seemingly been altered, or “retouched,” by airbrushing and photo editing software such as Photoshop. The latest such image to cause an uproar is one featured in a new Ralph Lauren advertisement that shows a model, Filippa Hamilton, so emaciated that her waist actually appears to be smaller than her head.
…On September 29th, Boing Boing’s Xeni Jardin posted the ad, which originally appeared on a blog dedicated to pointing out suspected retouched images called Photoshop Disasters, with the comment, “Dude, her head’s bigger than her pelvis.” Ralph Lauren responded by filing a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) complaint against Boing Boing and Photoshop Disasters, claiming that their use of the image was a copyright infringement that fell outside of the Fair Use laws which allow the media to reproduce creative content for the purposes of commentary and criticism.
…Another website to garner attention for its dedication to exposing photo retouching offenses is Jezebel.com. Speaking on the subject of retouching, Jezebel editor-in-chief Anna Holmes told Yahoo!, “I don’t see any point in retouching anymore … The cat’s out of the bag.” She added, “I think Americans in particular are sick of having the wool pulled over their eyes … even if it’s regarding fashion models and actresses. The more they do this sort of retouching — and then try to justify it, as the editor of SELF magazine recently did — the less anyone believes anything else they have to say, or show. They are, in a sense, digging their own (shallow) graves.”
Retouching has been taken to such an extent that it’s unhealthy for our society. This kind of retouching gives men an unrealistic standard of what to expect from a woman even as it gives women, who care a great deal about their looks, an impossible standard of perfection that they’re expected to work towards.
It’s one thing to correct red eye or edit out a pimple, but what does it say about us that we have to take the most beautiful women on earth and photoshop them to make them presentable for a magazine cover? Very little good, I think.
5 Responses to “I’d Prefer Unretouched Photos Of Women”
October 8 2009 / 1:55 pm
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That someone would even think that image of a stick-thin, starving woman would be appealing to any one is astounding. How grotesque!
October 8 2009 / 2:29 pm
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That is disgusting. Look at her arms.
If it wasn’t ’shopped, I’d be fronting a campaign to get her to a hospital.
I hope women now realize they don’t have to look like that. I’ll take a real woman over airbrushed every time. Hips, waist, curves, it’s all good. Plastic surgery doesn’t bother me, if that’s what she wants, but implants have always seemed an unnecessary risk to me.
Stay healthy, develop your mind, don’t look to the media for validation and you’ll never have to worry about how you look – to anyone who is going to matter, anyway.
October 8 2009 / 3:13 pm
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They make her look like Jack Skellington’s sister.
October 9 2009 / 5:21 pm
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Yes and no.
Not only retouching photos, but women wearing gobs of make-up — both need to go. Most women are, in fact, more beautiful in a more natural state, that is, with a few of their blemishes showing. It makes them more “real.”
On the other hand . . . I’ve seen some pics of celebrities without any touch-ups or other enhancements and, frankly, some of them are, well, maybe not hideous, but some of them are . . . OK, they are hideous. And since the age of hi-def TV, we now get to see every pock-mark and hairy mole that they have in vivid detail. Yikes. Not all celebs, mind you, but enough to learn that the beautiful people are not all that beautiful.
So, for them, by all means, retouch. And then, retouch again. Besides, this is hardly something new. They’ve been doing it since the 50s (Playboy certainly did), so men’s minds are already warped.
November 4 2009 / 10:59 pm
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This kind of retouching gives men an unrealistic standard of what to expect from a woman even as it gives women, who care a great deal about their looks, an impossible standard of perfection that they’re expected to work towards.
This kind of thinking shows an unrealistic idea of what men are capable of.
Stop assuming we’re idiots and don’t know the effect of MAKEUP/STYLING ALONE on a woman.
Do you get confused by a comb-over?
Funny, ’cause we don’t get confused by a fancy equivalent.
Guys don’t have an unrealistic expectation of women and their looks. For the most part, we’re rational and far less prone to let our “feeling” pull the wool over our eyes. And any guy with a clue has seen “before and after” pics of models, celebrities, and so on. That is to say “real world appearance” vs. “photo studio looks”.
I can’t speak for how such pictures affect women, but don’t try and blame us because, by that claim, women are too stupid to properly access their own self-image. That’s your problem, ladies, not ours.
Sure, every guy wants to land a supermodel. But when push comes to shove, every mature guy has learned the primary rule of beauty:
No matter how heartstoppingly gorgeous she is, no matter how smokin’ a body she has, there is some guy, somewhere, who is sick of her shit.
Sure, there are guys who only want trophy wives. Do you, as a female, give a rat’s ass about such shallow idiots? Do you really, really think that such a bozo, given a “realistic” expectation of how a woman should look is going to give you a serious, lasting relationship that isn’t going to end when you turn 35-40 and he can turn you in on a newer model?
Most guys with a clue are happy with a “realistically” attractive woman who cares about him and works to make him happy (in response to the same from him).
Guess what, ladies? Those guys spend far, far more time alone on a Friday night than the biggest dickheads out there.
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And it’s not the guys making those choices.