Dissertation
Kerry Lauren Heaney How has image-editing software
such as Photoshop, influenced and distorted our observation of the
female body in fashion editorial?
Co Page N
Contents Number 4-5
Chapter one - Introduction
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Chapter two - Is it due to the Fashion Industry?
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Chapter three - What else has caused this?
14-15
Chapter four - I’ve come to the conclusion...
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Chapter one –
Introduct
-(Tebbel, Cyn The Body Sn pgvii) ‘You switch on the box, settle onto the lounge and you’re about to sink your teeth into a nice chocolate biscuit when you’re faced with your media nemesis: she’s tall with big tits, big hair and big teeth. Everything else about her, though, is emancipated. She’s telling deodorant, reading the news or starring in your favourite drama, soap or sitcom.’
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(Wolf, Naomi –
‘Female sexuality is turned insid so ‘beauty’ can take its place, ke eyes lowered to their own bodies only to check their reflections in men’.
–
The Beauty My
tion. T
pg155)
his is the story of everything you ever see! Whether it’s a clothing company selling a dress or a car company trying to sell you the latest convertible, everything looks perfect, hardly anything you see in the media is a true representation of reality. It all comes down to image-editing software. For those of you that don’t know – ‘Image editing encompasses the processes of altering images, whether they be digital photographs, traditional analog photographs, or illustrations.’ (Wikipedia/Dictionary)
smaller with image retouching. There has been a lot of press recently with fashion companies such as Banana Republic (image 1) and the fact that they are making the most obvious mistakes in their editing process, for example, editing out body parts or making body parts inhumanly small. Banana Republic erased their models knee. However things like this which are very obvious to the audience leads me to believe that companies are doing it on purpose to gain press and media coverage, because as they say – ‘no publicity is bad publicity’.
Image editing software is used a lot these days in the process of making magazine spreads and even billboard advertisements. There are many different types of programs that can be used to carry out the editing process. Programs such as Adobe Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro. There are even apps such as ‘TouchRetouch’ and ‘PicTreat’ that will carry out a facial retouch in a matter of seconds, it is usually just as easy to edit the image as it is to take the picture.
Looking through almost every fashion magazine, you can see that the women on the pages in them are not ‘natural’. They have been Photoshopped/edited in some way or they are covered in make-up or even super skinny themselves. It isn’t like years ago when the likes of Marilyn Monroe or Elizabeth Taylor were role models because they were talented and beautiful in their own right and had more natural figures. Nowadays, women tend to view Angelina Jolie and Alexa Chung as role models. They may be beautiful, but a photo is rarely seen of them looking natural, both are unnaturally skinny and have changed their looks and weight a lot since the beginning of their fame. It is even known that the model doesn’t have to wear any make-up and it is all added digitally.
ndi – atchers With software such as Photoshop you can make anything appear to have happened or make anything look good, especially people. Industries and in particularly the Fashion Industry use these types of programs a lot to show off their products, but they will not put a picture of a model wearing their clothes in a Magazine without editing it first to make sure everything is ‘perfect’ and of course this means ‘perfecting’ the model as well. Everything from body shape to the colour of their skin can be changed. However, over the years this has caused a lot of controversy. The body type of the model has become so waif looking anyway and the industry is still making them look even
The definition of beauty is something, which is an excellent specimen of something and is pleasing to the eye. ‘Female sexuality is turned inside out from birth, so ‘beauty’ can take its place, keeping women’s eyes lowered to their own bodies, glancing up only to check their reflections in
the eyes of men’. (Wolf, Naomi – The Beauty Myth pg155) However, the real beauty of models is called into question when flicking through a Fashion Magazine as the images are mostly retouched. Some women are given an unrealistic image and they aspire to be like this. This causes concern for the audience of certain Magazines and women who are interested in Fashion. You cannot look at anything in the areas of Fashion or Fashion Editorial without being flooded with images of perfect-looking waif-thin young women and it is causing an unhealthy obsession with body image. Nevertheless, why has it come down to women editing their own images before they can show them to the world? Is it because they feel inadequate from constantly comparing themselves to the women in Fashion Editorial? Why does it matter if they look good in a photograph if only people they know and love are going to see it? Why have women become so obsessed by their body image, so much so that they cannot even post a picture online without editing it first? Who decides what the ‘normal’ is and why women have to look like this? Do women do this to feel better about themselves or use it as a ruse to fit it to a ‘perfect’ world and if you are going to look better for it afterwards without the pain and expense of surgery, why wouldn’t people do it! I will be answering these questions in a much broader way in the following paragraphs and I will also be explaining.
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Chapter two –
Is it due to the Fashion Industry? The celebrity-world can be a harsh place. Men and women are criticised about everything they do. The things they do are always going to upset some people. Most celebrities will have their picture in a magazine at some point and there will always be the Photoshop experts on hand to ‘fix’ any little problems people believe they may have. This leads people to believe that they actually look like this and can cause a lot of problems for people trying to look like them; one of these problems can be an Eating Disorder. ‘During the past decade, women branched the power structure; meanwhile, eating disorders rose exponentially and cosmetic surgery because the fastest growing medical speciality.‘ (Wolf, Naomi – The Beauty Myth) Eating Disorders are becoming even more of an epidemic amongst young girls and even young boys! There are even older women who are struggling. 90-95% of people with eating disorders are female.A lot of people believe most eating disorder such as
Anorexia and Bulimia stem from the media. And the Fashion Industry plays a huge part in this media. Everyday women are flooded with millions of images of women that are younger than them, women that are thinner than them and women that are more perfect than they believe themselves to be. This leaves them feeling inadequate and unhappy. This will not faze some women, some may just be left feeling glum but some women will react. It’s those whom act but take it to extremes that are the worrying factor. Those who diet and exercise and then eventually become obsessed with this dynamic are killing themselves very slowly and making their lives miserable to achieve something that isn’t even real in itself. They may start off saying its just a harmless diet, I will get to my goal weight and then I will stop, I will be happy with myself then. But those women may have something inside of them saying ‘this isn’t good enough, just a little more and then I will be happy’. But their goal weight passes and they are still not please with the way they look. They feel they are not good enough and punish themselves, but it is an
unrealistic goal. Even if they do lose all of the weight to become like their role models, they will be unhealthy, undernourished and miserable. Miserable that they are now the same weight, but it isn’t good enough and they still don’t look like that celebrity, they have made the people around them worry and they cannot stop themselves, it is a vicious cycle. All to look like the ideal woman. The Fashion Industry must take some blame for this. Through the editing of women, they have created an unrealistic, unachievable body image which some girls are killing themselves to try and attain. I have watched a lot of films and TV Documentaries for my dissertation, most of them based on body image and eating disorders. They show the devastating effects eating disorders can have on families and friends. They are caused by different factors, but they all have the same thing in common - their lives have been consumed by their disorder. Some of the films I have watched are; Documentaries - Dana: The eight year old Anorexic, Race to Size Zero, Thin. Films - Perfect Body, Sharing the secret, Dying to Dance, Centre Stage, A
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n Secret Between Friends, Hunger Point, The best little girl in the world, Little Girls in Pretty Boxes, Supersize vs Superskinny. In Race to Size Zero, two women carry out an experiment to see who can lose the most weight. One of them becomes so obsessed by this – she is on the verge of an eating disorder and has to stop before its too late. This shows that some people can have an underlying problem that is often triggered by something, usually unhealthy images online and in magazines. There are a lot of pro-anorexia blogs out there that use images from fashion magazines as their main source of inspiration for losing weight, these are the images that are airbrushed and unrealistic. There was controversy a couple of years ago, where one of these blogs used an image of Victoria Beckham on their home page, but this was an image of her at her ‘normal weight’ and she was seen as super skinny inspiration. In the news recently, there was a story about young children. The Daily Mail asked a group of primary school children (both male and female) what they wanted to be when they grow up and a large number of them replied with ‘skinny’. The article reported that ‘Children are reluctant to do PE or swimming because they are concerned about how their bodies look, and boys under ten describing themselves as ‘puny, weak and no good’ because they feel they are not muscular enough.’ (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2178914/
(Wolf, Naom The Beauty ‘During the past decade, women branched the power structure; meanwhile, eating disorders rose exponentially and cosmetic surgery because the fastest growing medical speciality.‘
8 What-I-want-I-grow-SKINNY.html) How do they even know what ‘fat’ and ‘thin’ is, when I was in school, children just used to play and talk to friends, we didn’t even know about anything like this! The models themselves don’t even look like this so it is very distressing that we are growing up in a generation that prefers artificial to genuine. A new trend has emerged recently where young girls are starving themselves to achieve a ‘thigh gap’, something which it popular amongst gaunt young models such as Cara Delevingne and Karly Kloss. This is where the Fashion Industry comes under fire. Many people protest about the use of such models saying they are not appropriate and they are not proper role models. They argue that young girls are starving themselves to look like them. Starving themselves to look a certain way. ‘Heroin Chic (as opposed to the ever-popular Starvation Chic), promoted drug use as another fashion must-have – a potentially deadly trend that was promoted by an industry littered with deceit. One of the reasons it worked so well is because maintaining a model-thin physique is impossible without help. Peek behind the scenes and you’ll discover that the daily diet for many models is champagne and cigarettes. Add heroin, cocaine and amphetamines, and you’ve got a recipe guaranteed to suppress even the most ravenous appetite.’ (Tebbell, Cyndi, The Body Snatchers, pg10) This is something shown on ‘Absolutely Fabulous’ – an amazing comedy starring Joanna Lumley and Jennifer Saunders. Its about two older women into fashion, they are always drunk and stoned and one of them has a child. It is something that mocks the Fashion Industry but it shows some truth, it shows slim Patsy Stone (played by Lumley), only ever taking drugs and drinking alcohol and she stays slim. This is obviously something that real models participate in. Kate Moss is a model well known for taking drugs, she does it because of a stressful schedule and the fact that she has to stay slim, whilst earning a living and trying to live her life at the same time. A famous model, who died from an AIDs related death due to her drug taking was Gia Carangi; One of the first supermodels. Wilhelmina Models - New York, signed her just after she turned 18 in 1978. She was a huge fan of David Bowie and used to hang around with ‘the Bowie kids’ in school, she went to many of his concerts and due to her mother’s abandonment when she was younger, went off the rails; she used to take drugs regularly. When she was noticed, she tried to cut down her weight, being slim anyway it didn’t have to be much (she was noticed for being beautiful as she was and still had to lose weight to be a model), she used to do this through drugs, diet and exercise. Sometimes even resorting to having water on her cereal instead of milk, in an attempt to lose weight. In the book written about Gia’s life called Thing of Beauty by Stephen Fried, he writes a small part about Seventeen magazine; ‘The Seventeen course was devised to give young girls the basics of posture, exercise, diet, hair care, skin care,
makeup grooming, fashion and manners’. (Fried, Stephen – The Beauty Myth pg64) So not only did models have to stay thin, they had to let modelling take over every aspect of their lives. If they wanted to stay a professional model, they had to keep to a strict diet and exercise plan, they had to wear the latest fashions, they had to do this, they had to do that. Gia was a rebel; she didn’t like any of this! Hence why drugs eventually became a huge part of her life, she couldn’t deal with it all. There are so many articles around now telling women of the latest diets and crazes, it is no doubt women try them if they are told they will lose weight fast and easily, however this is a far cry from reality. Women are always told that they are too big or too small, they are too short and they are too tall. They cannot get it right, even women who get paid for looking perfect have their own body hang-ups and people telling them they are not meant to look like that. Celebrity women are also under pressure to lose baby weight super fast. Take Victoria Beckham for example, she can argue all she likes that she is naturally skinny, but it is quite clear that she has to work hard for her super-skinny frame. When you see images of her from the past, she is slim, but she was never unbelievably skinny like she is today, so she has obviously given in to criticism and stays skeletal. However, now she is criticised for being malnourished, she cannot win. She is one of the women who lost their baby weight super fast - one of the fastest. Just 6 months after giving birth to Harper, she was modelling swimwear for multiple magazines. Most women couldn’t be that thin let alone maintain it before giving birth. Young girls are also being sexualised in magazines. There has been controversy about a modelling competition held by Australian magazine ‘Dolly’. They have been accused of exploiting the young girls they are supposed to correspond to in their recent model search. It is the first time their competition has been run since 2002, after it was axed because the then editor-in-chief Mia Freedman said it was a ‘negative thing for the readers and the magazine’. A young girl of 13 won the competition. The magazine stated that it is a good thing a girl of that age won, because she is representing the girls who buy the magazine, however others are saying that the modelling world, is tough and criticizing and no place for a child of that age. It is a very adult world! The current editor of they magazine defended her decision by stating that ‘We intentionally didn’t ask the girls what their dress size was or how much they weighed. We asked them to tell us something about themselves, we are not just looking for a fashion model, but a positive ambassador for Dolly.’ (Mia Friedman, Editor-in-chief Dolly Magazine) I was reading an article recently on how teen magazines have changed over the years. It’s an article by The Daily Mail and it compared the likes of Bliss (today) magazine to Jackie (1950s) magazine. Both are magazines aimed at young girls aged around 12-16. At
first glance it is easy to notice the different between the two. Jackie has on the front a 1950’s image of a young man and several story headings; one is ‘perfume tips for a kissable you’. On the cover of Bliss there is an image of a half naked Alexandra Burke with stories such as ‘The disturbing rise of ‘rate me’ videos’. As you look through the pages, it is like two different worlds. In the problem pages Jackie talks to girls about the prices of youth hostels and telling girls they should obey their parents curfew, whilst Bliss is talking to girls about oral sex and how a 13-year-old girl thinks she is ‘too fat’. In the celebrity pin-up pages Jackie has images of The Beatles and Elvis headshots, whilst Bliss has in it an image of Harry Styles on the beach ‘with his towel so low he’s almost showing his crotch’. These are just a few of the differences in the two magazines. You can see how today young girls have to grow up way too fast and magazines such as Bliss are encouraging it. (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2170716/ From-Jackie-tacky-As-issue-original-teen-magazinereveals-touching-innocence-editor-compares-todaysversion.html) There have been several attempts at getting magazines to try and change their attitudes and show real-looking women on their pages, some successful and some unsuccessful. Firstly, the successful; a 14 year old girl named Julia Bluhm knew how much pictures in the media effect the self esteem of young girls and their body image and set out to make a change. She collected 84,000 signatures against the airbrushing and editing of models in magazines. She staged a protest against Seventeen Magazines use of Photoshop to airbrush and adjust its models. The editor-in-chief of the magazine then recognised the petition and vowed never to change the shape of girl’s bodies and faces in her magazine. Ann Shoket (editor-in-chief of Seventeen) acknowledged that readers before had contacted her magazine. The readers felt that Seventeen was digitally enhancing its photos quite a lot and thought that the magazine had gone ‘too far’ especially because it has such a young audience. Teenagers gathered outside the magazines New York office in protest of the use of airbrushing; it was then that Bluhm created an online petition. She made the petition in a hope that Photoshopping policies would be changed and the magazine would use more realistic models and then teenagers would feel better about themselves. The pretesting teenagers also asked for Seventeen Magazine to print and publish one unaltered photo spread issue. In which they have agreed. Bluhm, happy with her success with Seventeen, then moved to Vogue (unsuccessful), to try and get them to follow in Seventeen Magazines footsteps. Ann Shoket wrote a letter to her readers, which was included in the magazine, stating that she hopes girls will stop obsessing about their bodies and that they will celebrate every kind of beauty in their pages and without the range of body types, skin tones, heights and hair textures, the world would be boring. This was a hug victory for young girls everywhere! However, there are some that are not willing to change their ways. Teen Vogue is an example of a magazine
9 that doesn’t seem to care that they make young girls feel bad about themselves. Two girls named Carina Cruz and Emma Stydahar handed the editors of Teen Vogue a petition of 20,000 signatures against the use of Photoshop in the magazine, one of the girls told of how when they went inside, they didn’t get a handshake, there was no greeting, there was none of that, all they said was ‘sit here – you wanted this meeting, what did you want to say?’ The girls stated that the editors were quite rude to them, the editors started showing them the magazines and said the teenagers hadn’t done their homework and it was a great magazine being unfairly accused.’ The teens wanted more than just Photoshop being banned. They want ‘a wider variety of faces being used, disclosure if a pimple is removed, they want a magazine they can relate too.’ (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2172781/ Were-unfairly-accused-Teen-Vogue-dismisses-14-yearold-girls-meeting-anti-Photoshop-protest.html) The media often tells women that they should be something other than what they are. In the book ‘Appearance and Power’, Kim K. P. Johnson and Sharron J. Lennon state that ‘Television as well as other forms of media, plays a role in the way women judge their appearances. In their research, Rudd and Lennon note that media influence is important in shaping evaluations of women’s appearances and subsequent feelings of self-worth. People are reinforced and rewarded for having attractive appearances, which for women is commonly understood to mean being thin or at least not overweight.’ (Johnson, Kim K.P. & Lennon, Sharron J. – Appearance and Power) However, being attractive or unattractive is not the only trait women have. Women also have personalities and feelings amongst other things. Why is it we are only judged on the way we look? Why do women get judged on the way we look? Somebody could be fat but be extremely kind and considerate towards others, but they are less likely to be a role model for someone than somebody who is beautiful with an ugly personality. This is what the media, and in particular the Fashion industry, has created over the years. The Fashion Industry is constantly telling us women that we are ugly and we need to change what’s on the outside. This is why the beauty industry is a £100 billion dollar a year industry. This money is made from make-up, diet and exercise, fragrances, skin care, hair products and cosmetic surgery. None of this a women needs to live. It is something the media tells us we need and we will happily go and buy to make us feel better about ourselves. There are even advertisements for cosmetic surgery at the back of women’s fashion magazines. Have they no shame! You look through the magazine and are bombarded with the photoshopped images of the super skinny perfect models and are feeling extremely body conscious, the last thing you need to see is an advertisement showing you a quick but costly way, you can change your body! You can have every kind of procedure nowadays, everything from a
rhinoplasty, to a complete body overhaul. You can even have multiple procedures in one, like Heidi Montag did. She had 10 procedures at once and looked extremely fake, but happier when she had finished. Her mother barely recognised her! She did it in a search for ‘perfection’. There are a lot of celebrities who are said to be a fan of cosmetic surgery, women such as Nicole Kidman (botox), Angelina Jolie (nose and lips) and Pamela Anderson (breast enhancement). Name any woman celebrity and there is probably a surgery story that goes with their name. It is considered ‘the norm’ in Hollywood! Magazines are filled with advertisements for beauty products and fragrances. Looking through a copy of Vogue from June 2012, I found most of the Magazine to be advertisements for clothing, fragrance, creams, jewellery and make-up. All of which are meant to ‘improve’ the woman. The clothing will make her look chic and sometimes slimmer and make her fit in with the fashionable, the fragrance will make her smell nicer, and with the way some of the advertisements look, they try to persuade the women that they can get men by wearing a certain fragrance. The creams will give her a more youthful, glowing look and make her look ‘fresh’, the jewellery will make her look chic and stylish. We don’t agree with the way women are portrayed, but yet we still buy the products they are advertising. From every fashion magazine I have come across, there is always a section or photo shoot of the latest make-up trend or ‘look’. For example: the colour-blocking trend of 2012. There were several images of models ‘pulling off ’ the trend, but if anybody else tried the tutorial, they would end up looking like a clown right out of the circus! None of this would be shown in magazines without the huge price tag of course. An example of this would be the £21 Lancôme finger sized tube it takes to look like Kate Winslet, but even she doesn’t look like that (image 2)! The rest of the magazine includes articles from people who have achieved more than you and are better looking than you, or have a better marriage than you, or how you can have a better sex life. There are even pages in magazines now that show products and give a scientific reasoning behind the product – such as a new cream etc, so it looks like it is a scientist giving their professional opinion of the cream and how it works and how successful it is. Yet, it is a scientist who works for the company giving a biased opinion to get consumers to buy it. I have a book called ‘Vogue Natural Health and Beauty’, it includes tips and tricks women can try out to achieve better health and beauty the natural way, therefore if you buy it and do these things you can live a better life, but if you don’t then stick with what you’ve got and regret it. We continue to buy these magazines and books and the fashion industry continues to gain popularity and riches!
(John Kim K Appe Powe
‘Television as well media, plays a role judge their appear search, Rudd and L dia influence is im evaluations of wom and subsequent fe People are reinforc having attractive a for women is comm mean being thin o weight.’
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Chapter thre
What else has caus this? Image-editing software such as Photoshop has distorted our idea of how the female body should be, however there are other factors that add to this point. For example, in the sporting world, athletes often try to maintain a child-like form in orders to keep the competition at bay. This can be seen in the films; Dying to Dance and Perfect Bodies, these show athletes of different kinds, trying to keep their pre-pubescent bodies in order to remain able to compete for longer, but they end up doing more harm than good when they take weight loss too far. They see it as an advantage to delay puberty because then they don’t have the normal about of body fat and they can stay within the criteria set out by the international bodies. ‘Its not only gymnasts who suffer from eating disorders.
Former British schoolgirl cross-country champion Bronwyn Lougheed says her will to succeed led to anorexia: ‘I was never the fat kid, but from a running point of view, the skinnier you were and the more you held off puberty, the greater it was. I was 14 when I started abusing laxatives and throwing up and it progressed from their’.’ (Tebbel, Cyndi – The Body Snatchers, pg146). Although it is usually women that are affected by the perfect images we see everyday, men are also susceptible to feeling inadequate next to images of their own sex. People usually expect men to be the stronger sex, but this doesn’t mean they do not feel incompetent when looking though magazines and seeing men with perfectly sculpted bodies looking back at them. They are bound to feel some kind of envy
when seeing these images. They see men with perfect bodies, full heads of hair, full set of pearly white teeth surrounded by women ‘These men are alive, have personalities and display active vibrant poses.’ (Wolf, Naomi – The Beauty Myth) The number of Male Anorexics is rising; it even has its own nickname – manorexic (not proper). The NHS as specified that ‘Environmental factors, such as going through puberty or living in a culture where being thin is an ideal, then causes the person to begin a pattern of long-term dieting and weight loss’. (NHS). As part of my research I asked a few questions on Yahoo Answers. One of
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these questions was; ‘as a man, do you feel you need to change because of Fashion Images? (For example, do you feel too fat, too small, too tall, like you should be going to the gym every day etc)? I got two replies; one was – I may not be perfect but I’m happy, life is too short to be worried about fashion sh*t, and the other reply said ‘as a straight man, I can tell you we do not give two f*cks about fashion’. These are only two opinions of people who actually answered the question, I think a lot of men are more bothered by these images but are too proud to say anything, but some probably aren’t bothered by the images. Reporters who sit behind desks anonymously and type away with their harsh comments are also to blame for the decline of healthy body image. They sit there writing about bad a certain celebrity looks without make-up, or how somebody have put on weight, or a model is eating a hamburger. Celebrities can do no right with the press around. If the celebrity loses weight, they have an eating disorder, if they put on weight, she must be pregnant, if she isn’t wearing makeup she looks awful, but if she is, she is overdressed or she must be in a secret relationship with another celebrity. Why do these people think it is right to publish their horrible little comments making more and more people self conscious, when they themselves, are probably sat there looking awful or ‘normal’ themselves. It’s not right! It is also wrong that the paparazzi are allowed to hound celebrity children just because of who their parents are. Suri Cruise is an example of this. Her and Katie Holmes are always having their picture taken, often when Suri is acting up, but this can only be expected of a child who gets no privacy and will probably grow up to be extremely self conscious because the press are always scrutinizing her and picking at every detail of the way she looks and acts! There are also other factors that contribute to the distortion of the female body. I will explain this in the next paragraphs. For example; In Japan there is a culture happening called The Kawaii Culture. Women try to stay in a childlike state of body. They do it to ‘fit in’ with what is considered normal in Japan. 84% of women in Japan are underweight. Women ‘follow’ the culture in order to be ‘normal’. Next, Is it the
parent’s fault? Should they censor it? It is not just fashion editorial that causes unrealistic body disorders, girls are brought up in a skinny world, dolls like Barbie are unbelievably skinny, if Barbie was a real women she would be 120lbs and her measurements would supposedly be 18 inch waist, 39 inch bust and 33 inch hips. She would also have body fat so low that she wouldn’t be able to menstruate. Dolls usually have perfect hair, a perfectly white set of straight teeth; they wear high heels, dress provocatively. Yet parents are happy to buy these dolls for their children. But they should do it with caution! A study found that the toys children play with when they are younger could influence what they do in the future. A lot of children just play with dolls and think nothing more of it, however there are a few who become obsessed by the image of the dolls. One woman, named Cindy Jackson became so infatuated with Barbie’s appearance that she underwent as many as 20 plastic surgeries and spent as much as $55,000 on this, in an attempt to look like Barbie. In America, Baby beauty pageants are quite popular, there is even a show about them called ‘Toddlers and Tiaras’. On the show you can see how pushy the mums are to try and make their children do things they clearly don’t want to do. They have to dress a certain way, full hair, tan and make-up for a child of two, they have to act a certain way – by performing grueling routines, most of the children don’t even know what they are doing, but they’re being brought up in a cruel, adult world and are forced to grow up quickly, because the parents often take them to several pageants a year and they are ‘practising all of the time’. The pageants claim that they are just giving the girls confidence and helping them to build their self-esteem, but the fact is the girls are wearing suggestive costumes, contact lenses, fake tan and false eyelashes etc. Children are innocent and should be kept that way for as long as possible because the world can be a harsh place. A young girl of 9, called Dana, knew just how horrible it could be, she was Anorexic. She was taken to Rhodes Farm where they look after girls and help them with their eating disorders. She said that she was controlling her food intake to less that what she should
(Tebbel, Cyndi The Body Snatche ‘I was never the fat kid, but from a running point of view, the skinnier you were and the more you held off puberty, the greater it was. I was 14 when I started abusing laxatives and throwing up and it progressed from their’.’
In my opinion, it’s as bad to call somebody skinny, as it is to call somebody fat.
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13 published in your Magazine? -Would you ever publish un-airbrushed models in your magazine? Thank you so much for your time, answers to these questions would definitely help me a lot with my Dissertation Research!’
have been eating per day and doing a lot of exercise to burn off what she was eating. This is a girl of 9 years old! She should be out playing with her friends, not caring about what she eats, but she was very aware of what she ate and counted the calories in everything. Some toys are used as a ploy to teach children about the real world, for example – Lego teaches them about building and sharing, dress up kits allow them to express themselves and show an interest in what they want to be, but dolls such as Barbie, Ken and Action Men could give children an unrealistic view of life and body image. It could lead to Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD). ‘Mind’ describes BDD as ‘A mental health problem related to body image, in which an individual has a preoccupation with one or more perceived or slight defects in his or her appearance. BDD is diagnosed only if the preoccupation causes significant distress, disrupts daily functioning or both’. (http://www.mind.org.uk/mental_health_a-z/7990_ understanding_body_dysmorphic_disorder) It is estimated that two percent of the population has been diagnosed with the disorder, however the percentage that actually suffer with it could be higher. Wikipedia states that; ‘It has been theorized that media pressure may contribute to BDD onset, for example, glamour models and the implied necessity of aesthetic beauty. However, BDD occurs in all parts of the world, including isolated areas where access to media is limited or (practically) non-existent. Media pressure is therefore an unlikely cause of BDD, although it may act as a trigger in those already genetically predisposed or could worsen existing BDD symptoms’. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_dysmorphic_ disorder#Causes) The media isn’t the only cause for the BDD but it is definitely a huge contributor. Sometimes models are built that way, they were skinny from being a child because they have a high metabolism etc. But this doesn’t stop others wanting to be like them. The Fashion Industry should just use healthy looking women in a bid to stop unhealthy body image. However, it should be women of all shapes and
sizes, as long as they are healthy. Most of the models people never remember anyway, so they are there to show off clothes and advertise make-up etc, so if they look good, why cant they stroll down the catwalk at a size 12 and not be considered plus-sized? In my opinion, it’s as bad to call somebody skinny, as it is to call somebody fat. Nobody should be made fun of because of the shape they are and the sooner people realise this the sooner factors such as eating disorders and Body Dysmorphia will decrease in numbers and people will be happy. The Fashion Industry have turned a blind eye to Eating Disorders and drug use etc for years because the models stay small and the clothes look good on them, but something should be done. The Fashion Industry has however tried ‘reverse retouching’. This is where the editor tries to make the model look healthier. It is still Photoshopping and using fake images, but they are doing it to put healthier image out there, to add curves and make the model look more voluptuous. The technique was recently used on Karlie Kloss (image 3). A photographer had taken some images of Kloss to show off her beauty, but her ribs had to be edited out because she looked so thin. It was Greg’s desire to represent Karlie as she naturally is ... slender, athletic and beautiful. That is why he released the images as he intended them to be seen by the public. He is shocked and dismayed that unbeknownst to him, Numéro took it upon themselves to airbrush over his original images. Greg stands by his original artwork and cannot stress enough that he not only was unaware of the magazine’s retouching but also finds the airbrushing of Karlie unacceptable and unnecessary. (Kadel’s Studio) I sent an email to the Vogue Editor and it said the following; ‘Hello, My name is Kerry Lauren Heaney; I am a Graphic Design Student in my last year at University. I am now writing my Dissertation and have chosen a Fashion related question, as I am very interested in that particular area and a huge fan of Vogue. I was wondering if you could help me out by answering a few questions, this would really help me with my research being the best Fashion Magazine out there! The questions are; -Which image editing software do you use in FashionEditorial to airbrush models? -What is the percentage number of Women and Men whom are airbrushed before the images of them are
I sent this email on the 10th of November 2012. They have not yet got back to me. However, I think the fact that they ignored my email said a lot more then an answer actually could! It just shows that they know image editing has become a problem, it has gone too far, but they are unwilling to change this factor so they choose to ignore it and hope it will go away. But instead of the problem going away, it is creating problems and causing more harm to women! I also asked several questions on Yahoo Answers one of them was; ‘would you prefer to see airbrushed images in magazines, or natural (anything from perfect skin, to making people look slimmer)?’ I got several replies to this question; the majority of the answers said they preferred natural, especially for cosmetics, because they should be showing how their product actually works, or if the company did airbrush its models, their should be a disclaimer stating where and how they airbrushed them. Only one person said they preferred airbrushed out of seven replies, but they did say that they didn’t agree with the changing of colour tone and body shape, they said it is causing too many girls to feel badly about their bodies, so it should only be used to fix blemishes etc, but with a disclaimer. I also conducted a questionnaire as part of my research. 18 people filled out my questionnaire, 8 of them were male and 10 were female, the age range was 20-36, with the majority being in there 20s. All of them read some kind of magazine, with 10 of them reading Fashion magazines. 94% of them disagreed with the way in which the media portrays women; there was different reasoning for this. Some of these reasons are; it is feminist, unhealthy and inadequate, it is manipulative and unrealistic, it can lead to an unhealthy lifestyle, women feel like they should look like this and they are treated differently to men. I then put several images of different body types and 88% of men preferred the athletic or curvier woman, 90% of women preferred the more athletic man. 6/10 women prefer to see un-airbrushed models in magazines, whereas 7/8 men prefer un-airbrushed models. This is because they believe natural is more beautiful and they believe women look false. The small few that prefer airbrushed gave reasons such as; it is more artistic and looks better, its nicer to look at and more appealing. Last of all, I asked both men and women if they were happy with their shape or if they would rather be bigger or slimmer. 25% of men were happy with their weight, 37.5% of them would like to be bigger and 37.5% would like to be slimmer. However, the figures are much different for women and this is probably because of the Photoshopped images we see everyday giving them a distorted body image – 70% would like to be slimmer, 10% are happy and 20% would like to be bigger.
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However I have seen no proof also stated once that is she w considered too fat. The Fashio natural images, both of wome there should be a disclaimer o used in small print.
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15 Through my studying and research, I have come to the conclusion that the Fashion Industry using Photoshop has influenced and distorted the observation of the Female in Fashion Editorial. I know that this isn’t the only cause of the distortion of body image, as there are many other factors, such as what I have mentioned above, for example: TV Shows, other forms of media and children’s toys such as Barbie. But it is a huge contributor! It isn’t even a hidden thing, the fact that they edit images is very well known, there are often ‘mistakes’ made in the editing process, or photos surface of the before and after (Image 4). There are even still Magazines such as Teen Vogue that think they are being unfairly accused, but the fact is, they can deny it and say they are being unfairly accused all they like, they know what they are causing and they know it is wrong, but they believe that images are better that was and I don’t think this will change, they have already come as far as changing models skin tone and weight, why would they stop, they have gotten away with it and the damage is already done. Tyra Banks quoted in America’s Next Top Model: ‘She likes that Laura isn’t super skinny, she likes that she has an ass’ and she states that ‘the Fashion world is changing’ (ANTM, Cycle 19)
me to clusion...
f of this changing Fashion World, Tyra were a model today she would be on Industry should start showing more en and men and if any editing is used, on the image, stating why and how it is
Name: Website: Email: Phone:
Kerry Lauren Heaney www.kerrylaurenh.com kerrylaurenheaney@hotmail.co.uk 07511430850