I stumbled upon an interesting article last week by Beth Stebner for the Daily Mail demonstrating a new software which breaks down the retouching of an image demonstrating how the photograph has been manipulated and retouched to create the "flawless" appearance of celebrities and models alike.
The 2 computer scientists who developed this say the reason behind it is "that consumers should be told how much altering has been done on a particular image" and "The ubiquity of these unrealistic and highly idealized images has been linked to eating disorders and body-image dissatisfaction in men, women, and children".
I was already well aware of how images are altered and unrealistic, in fact I wrote an essay on this very topic back in my Media Studies days so it wasn't new news, but I do believe there are still plenty of people who sadly don't realise the degree to which this is done and people are sadly still holding themselves up against completely unrealistic expectations.
Young girls don't ever seem to think they are thin enough, women who have just had babies feel they need to lose the weight within weeks and more mature women are made to feel ashamed of the lines on their faces and all of this is in no small part due to the bombardment of "perfect looking people" in media.
Having said all that there is of course the argument that the media cant sell what we wont buy and clearly if we keep buying these magazines or celebrity endorsed products we must want to see these ideals so it must appeal to us on some level.
I think its an interesting subject to consider - if we all buy into it, is it because we secretly prefer to see only beautiful people that we regard as aspirational? Would we all walk past a magazine if it had average looking people on it? I put that as a question because I quite honestly don't know the answer myself.
And is it fair to embarrass celebrities in this way? I know that technically photoshopping is cheating but they are also held up to far worse scrutiny than we are and by a lot more people. Most of us don't like to see a bad photo of ourselves on Facebook so imagine how it would feel to see it on the cover of a magazine or a newspaper?
Is there to be sympathy for the celebrity in all of this or is that just part of their job and so they just have to take the good with the bad? Personally I hate seeing those photos of (mostly) female celebrities on beaches or sitting down with a short dress or skirt and the big coloured circle around their cellulite and I hate it for 2 reasons ....
1. I think its cruel to the celebrity in question
2. Instead of making me feel better because even stunning looking women have cellulite it actually just serves to remind me that its deemed a terrible thing to have instead of just a normal and natural part of life for most women.
I can definitely see the benefits to making it clear to people how altered the images in magazines and advertisements are but I also hope it doesn't just become another way for the media to be cruel!
