WARNING–THIS POST IS KIND OF A RANT
A tweet from @DepressedDarth caught my attention this morning, and then it angered me at so many levels. But first, let’s get to the matter of DepressedDarth’s tweet.
It was a link to like.com that showed celebrities before Photoshop and after Photoshop pictures. You can see all of them by clicking here. After looking at the pictures, my first thought was this had to be bogus, so I went and trolled the interwebs and discovered that others had written about the same pictures. A sample of this can be found at the this link on the Huffington Post. So DepressedDarth was not peddling false information, but the people working the Photoshop certainly are.
pic from resources3.news.com
I would be far more forgiving of this if what the Photoshop pictures did was to remove a temporary blemish or to highlight a hair color or something minor. People have that done all the time when they get their portrait made for Christmas cards or resumes and that is no big. I don’t even think it is always bad to Photoshop–say, for a movie poster or something as long as it is not altering the basic characteristics of the individual.
However, this is not what the miracle of digital editing did to these pics. In nearly ever instance the celebrity was made thinner and given bigger breasts.
The sampling was almost entirely of women, except for one I think of George Clooney, but his man-card has been in question ever since he made the worst Batman ever.
Most of these pictures were about the sexual attributes of women, and therefore it reinforces the misogynist view in our culture that women are nothing more than sexual objects to be oogled, and if they do not meet the standards of some sicko photo-editor, then just improve them. Yuck.
I am a father to two daughters and it infuriates me that they may be getting the idea from media they are only of worth if they look like these women in the pictures, yet, ironically, these women don’t even look like these women in the pictures. It is the creation of an ideal that is unattainable, and this unattainable ideal can only lead to doubt, insecurity, and dysfunction.
Then there is the lying aspect of it all. One of the pics was of Beyonce and it commented on her baby weight being digitally removed. Why? Why would you hide and lie about the way the human body works? Wouldn’t it be just be better for her to put a few more clothes on and take an honest picture instead? Oh, wait, but that would not sell. Another aspect of truth is the Madonna picture. The actual photo makes her look like a used up meth addict who had burned her body out. Then they touch it up and she looks young and fresh. People should see the real one, because when you abuse your body and whore yourself out to celebrity culture, the result will be something truly monstrous.
