It surprisingly taught me a lot more than that. Throughout my work day I would receive request for several different things which included using a track pad and pen tool to outline anything from jewelry to celebrities. The other request I did was photo retouching. That meant cleaning up skin blemishes, "slimming" figures and correcting skin color. The first few weeks I watched on as the senior digital imager manipulated females to fit societies idea of "perfection". My first major request was Bethany Frankel's summer spread where my assignment was remove the wrinkles and spots on her under eyes and forehead. Following that assignment I received a spread with a Sport Illustrated model who to any eye would think she was a very skinny female. My request we to slim her inner thighs, stomach and arms. I was very uncomfortable completing the request but felt obligated as this had been the field I dreamed of being apart of for so long.
Photographs have consumed my life, I think it is such a powerful tool in society. Yet the media has figured a way to manipulate perfectly normal and healthy human beings into unrealistic figures. These images are seen by thousands of male and female readers daily and give off a perception of wealth, power and privilege. Young generations see these images and want to encompass them, so they wrap themselves into a world that has been digitally manipulated to be glitzier, skinner and ageless.
This worries me as an aspiring fashion and documentary photographer that society cannot trust everything they see. I want to be a photographer who celebrates the beauty of aging and the curve of the female figure. I want to teach woman and men to look at beauty in a different way than how our media presents it.
Believe it or not, go open a magazine, every image, every single image in that magazine has been manipulated in one way or another.
I occasionally see women whose thighs are as thick as their calves, and look like a skeleton covered in skin. It's terrible. "Killing us softly" is all too true and we need to fix this.
ReplyDeleteThe extremely sad thing about this is seeing a beautiful woman who is thin want to be even thinner because of the pressure that society puts on her.
ReplyDeleteThis very sad because little girls see these pictures and they want to look like these people that don't even exists.
ReplyDeleteIt's so sad that society has come to this. I remember being a young girl and idolizing women on t.v. and I as I grew older, realizing that half of who they are has been altered by the computer in some way. I love that you talked about this from the other side, not just someone who looks at the pictures and photographs but has also worked on the side that manipulates them. It honestly makes me so sick that we cannot just accept women for who they are and all of their "imperfections". I know that being a photographer has been a dream of yours forever, Lauren, and you do a beautiful job, but I hope that this really opened your eyes. I also think this is a great start to an activist piece, but I would like more. What can we do as an audience to change this or stop our next generation from idolizing these people? Just something to think about and contemplate. Nice job overall!
ReplyDeleteI love that your goal at the end of all of this is to capture the real woman in a photograph. So rarely to we see a real, curvy, beautiful woman in the pages of our favorite magazines. It is really scary the effect this has on the younger femal population. In high school, I worte a paper about the medias influence on eating disorders, and it encompassed this same topic. It's terrifying to think about the young girls who are skipping dinner so someday they can look like thier favorite actress or singer. I hope in your professional career, you will chage the face of this ugly trend. Very eye-opening and very great post!
ReplyDeleteLove your topic, its something that truly is seen everyday! I find myself seeing pictures of models, saying things like "thats not even what they look like" or "that's Photoshopped". Why cant our society just be able with the way people look. The women in the pictures are stunning the way they are, too bad the rest of the world doesnt think so.
ReplyDeletei find it interesting that so many people will talk about this problem, yet nothing has come to fix it. I'm not meaning to call you out on this in any means. But in all the classes that I have taken and if you look at a lot of blogs, it seems that everyone touches on this at some point. So how is it that no one has made a change for this yet?
ReplyDeleteExcellent job on the blog! I really liked that you had your own story to touch upon the issue. I think it's funny that many women/men out there aim to have bodies like the ones in magazines but those bodies in the magazines don't even exist. I really liked your point on the subject.
ReplyDeleteWhile I have heard that all the images in magazines were photoshopped, I always somehow fail to realize it when I find myself flipping through them and envying the models' looks. So it's nice to know that someone in "real life" (i.e. not simply on TV) is actually able to also claim that such things are true, and maybe that will help cement the notion that I'm not actually looking at "real" people.
ReplyDeleteIn agreement with Whit, but instead of finding it comforting, I almost find it eerie that you did it in spite of your discomfort with it. Please don't get me wrong - I understand everything that went along with that decision and am not trying, at all, to say you should've been a martyr for the cause, but it gets me to wondering how many of those assignments it would take to break your mind of how wrong and disgusting it really is to manipulate people like that. Or, even worse, how many it'll take for you to actually believe that you're "correcting imperfections." Also makes me wonder how many things out there that I'm doing are breaking my feminist ideologies and replacing my progressivism with stagnatism...
ReplyDeleteI like the aspect of what you are bringing to our attention. My suggestion would be more of an attention grabbing introduction. The title is great, but the introduction paragraph is a little dry. I like how you threw in a personal story of your personal beliefs and work life for your internship. Common misconception brings us to believe that these models are prefect and are born this way. Exploring the idea of perfection is great, because our idea of perfection is a myth. It's an idea that can only be created through editing.
ReplyDeleteYour personal connection to the "corrections" happening is interesting. If you continue to explore the topic, it would be interesting to get your take on why the photos are manipulated, how and why standards of beauty affect real, everyday women. For example, one take on the phenomenon is that women's bodies are considered to be public property in a way that men's bodies are not.
ReplyDeleteI liked reading about your internal struggle. Do other photo editors feel your internal conflict? Is it about having a conscience? Is it about being educated about the affects little girls seeing altered photos? Is it about being a woman? Is it about lying? Is it about money or a job or what society expects you to do? How can a person in your field get ahead but still refuse to contribute to society's portrayal of people in altered media? Is it possible? Great topic choice and good honesty. It was an interesting angle and I'm ready for more.
ReplyDeleteLauren, this is such a great topic to write about, as I feel as if it isn't addressed enough! I can't believe that you had such responsibility that you were the one to make the changes to these photos. Although that seems like a great opportunity and such good experience for you, I completely see where you felt wrong about doing the changes to make the already beautiful women look unreal. I think your plan to make a change with your future career is one of the best things you can do -- change starts with you!
ReplyDeleteThis is a really cool blog! I am finding it hard to get my thoughts together while RiRi is staring at me like that! I guess the look of your page is just as attention-grabbing as the content.I hope you can use the experience that you wrote about as an opportunity to follow your instincts. We have been covering this subject for so long and it never seems to change for the better. Somehow, as real women, we are continually buying into this pursuit of perfection. I don't believe it would be so prevalent if we didn't.
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