Before & After Photoshop GIFs Make Me Feel Even Worse About Myself
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In our feature today, Emilie Littlehales takes on before & after Photoshop GIFs, and how—contra to intent?—they wind up making her feel worse about her own body and looks. I think her essay is interesting and insightful (that’s why we published it!), but I have to say I feel a bit differently about seeing airbrushing exposed myself.
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Here’s what makes the whole business of Photoshop so sneaky: The altered images we see are still recognizable as people, and they’re still presented as a beauty standard that we should want to achieve More
If you put Katy Perry’s face on Paula Deen’s head, it still looks pretty much just like Paula Deen. This shouldn’t be able to happen.
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Fashion magazines are notoriously known for using models who are unhealthily thin and photoshopping them to look even thinner, but apparently skinny no longer sells like it used to, so now some of these mags are adopting an equally disturbing trend of digitally enhancing these models to look larger and curvier. More
Remember when the hottest Hollywood accessory was a gestating baby? Well move over, fetuses—the latest paparazzi catnip is mascara-free lashes and unpainted lips. If ‘jumped the shark’ is a thing we say anymore, then the ‘celebs without makeup‘ thing has definitely jumped the shark. More
Surprisingly, the best part of the March/April issue of the Economist’s lifestyle and culture magazine, Intelligent Life, is not a story called “The Rise of the Man Bangle.” No, it’s the lovely cover photo of Cate Blanchett, who shows us how ‘no airbrushing’ should be done. More
Despite the backlash women’s magazines have received on photoshopping and whittling away the waistlines, arms and thighs of their models to unrealistic proportions, these covers continue to grace our checkout lines (and hopefully not our mailboxes if you’re like me and canceled any such subscriptions). On top of portraying women as flawless with Barbie-fied bodies, these photoshopped and airbrushed photos continue to make women and girls feel badly about themselves–even though we know they are not real. It’s just offensive that women continue to get portrayed like that and told that their real and imperfect bodies are not good enough for the public to see. To prove our point, we pulled together a roundup of some of the most offensive photoshopped covers of the year. Take a look and see if you agree: More
If you thought the cleverly photoshopped bodies on the magazine covers at the check-out aisle were bad, wait until you see this: The bodies on most of the models that clothing retailer, H&M, uses on its website are computer-generated fakes. More
Yesterday, the U.K. Advertising Authority said beauty company L’Oreal must pull two magazines ads, one featuring Julia Roberts and the other with model Christy Turlington. Usually when you hear complaints about photoshopped ads and images, the gripes have to do with folks artificially slimming stars down—tummies tucked, cellulite removed, a little fat shaved off the arms. The most recent retouching debacle, though, involves wrinkles—or, more specifically, the lack thereof.
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By this point, we all know (at least intellectually) that many of the images we see in magazines and advertisements are airbrushed and photoshopped to make starlets and models look like anything but you and me (no matter how good you and me look!). But it’s hard to remember this sometimes, when you’re looking at the latest gorgeous photo shoot with Mila Kunis or Sarah Jessica Parker or some Eastern European runway model with a 14-inch waist. For that reason, we never tire of seeing the ‘before’ shots of these touched up photos. So let’s take a look at some of the waist-nipping, thigh-shaving, skin-smoothing shenanigans, found everywhere from magazines to billboards and even ads for hair dye. More
In an attempt to discourage women from aspiring to the utterly impossible, the American Medical Association has formally taken a stand against photoshopping, hoping to change the presence of unrealistic bodies and faces flaunted on magazine covers. More
