of the magazine it would be published in. Looking at all these images I wonder, can anyone be made to look beautiful?’ with photos edited like these and celebrates that we admire being make to look ‘perfect’ when the truth is that no one is that perfect and everyone of them has their flaws and imperfections just like the rest of the woman of the world. This is an image of a woman and then after she has had make-up and been photo shopped to not even look like the same person anymore. It puts through the message of; don’t believe what you see in the glossy magazines because they are all false. So I have looked at some of the good and bad points of photo shopping models and celebs in magazines and the way we are lead to believe that it’s what they actually look like. I want to touch on how companies would use these kinds of images to indorse products. For all these clearskinned beautiful celebs people see in the magazines how close are people to buying the products they are advertising because they think the results will be the same as the image or starved themselves to look like the skinny celebs and models that are plastered all over the covers of magazines because it is what we are lead to believe is what your suppose to look like to be gorgeous. But fashion
magazines always hit back the critics that tell them they are deceiving their readers by saying that the people who read their publications are made fully aware of the fact they photo-shop their images which I think isn’t true at all as I didn’t even know they photo shopped images in magazines till my teens and until then thought it was all real. I think one of the last things to touch on is; do these models and celebs actually agree with themselves being portrayed as something they are not for the sake of ‘fashion’ and their jobs. I looked at famous fashion designer Ralph Lauren;
This image is of Ralph Lauren model Filippa Hamilton who in the image on the left is a healthy model size 4 (American) she was fired from Ralph Lauren just before the image on the right went into publication, she said in an interview with a fashion critic that; “They fired me because they said I was overweight and I couldn’t fit in their clothes anymore,” she said. “I was shocked to see that super skinny girl with my face. It’s very sad, I think, that Ralph Lauren could do something like that.” To make a stunning woman look like a stick insect isn’t what I would class as beautiful and would most women want to buy clothes that their right arm wouldn’t properly fit in? It doesn’t exactly do a lot for peoples self esteem to be told you have to look THAT skinny (which I think is humanly impossible) to be considered beautiful in the fashion industry is just wrong.
The whole point of this article was to look at both sides so I want to look at a point that is defiantly ‘for’ photoshopping. I’m not sure if it’s an ethically correct view on why we should photo-shop some images but I know that a lot of people would think it and I know I do and that is the point of ‘do we want to see the reality of the older celebs and models’ or do we want to continue thinking that ‘oh, I could look that good at her/his age’ I think a great example of this is that of Madonna; I think until she decided to come out of the limelight of fame I would prefer to see Madonna looking young and
amazing in images and not old and tired with all the wrinkles and bad hair and I’d rather Photoshop save me from having to look at the reality of what happens to the beautiful woman of the world with age, for the time being anyway and I’m sure most woman would agree. But what I do think is a very good idea is implementing some kind of requirement of the media to warn the public of deceiving images so that we may begin to re-program our minds to realize exactly what we are looking at– an illusion.
FASHION;
&
the illusion the reality
In this article I am going to be looking at what we see in the glossy fashion magazines compared to what the reality of what these woman we idolise to look like so much actually look like and what the fashion industry does to these women, with make-up and photo-shop to make them the fantasy of what we want to be. Fashion magazines what to create the image of the ‘perfect woman’ weather it’s a celebrity or a model, they go through such an extraordinary change from the click of the camera to publishing and I’m going to look at them changes and weather I think its ethically correct to deceive the reader by printing pictures of woman that don’t actually look like they appear to. I guess in some ways photo-shopping woman to make them even more gorgeous than they already are doesn’t have to be seen as a bad thing as long as they still look like the same person just with a couple of ‘improvements’ like clearer skin or to make their hair shinier. But I think it gets out of hand when the person is changed to look completely dif-
ferent and it’s obvious that the image has been photo-shopped or it has gone too far that the person looks deformed. Where there are some really badly photo-shopped images there are some that are really well done that completely change what the model looks like, even making them a lot skinner than they really are. In fashion being skinny is what sells and what the fashion industry class as beautiful. I once heard that the models are so skinny because they are clothes hangers for the clothes and nothing more, and to have them a normal healthy size (like most woman look) would take away the attention from the clothes. In my opinion I can see where the fashion industry are coming from in that sense, but that is catwalk which I feel is very different to the fashion magazines we read . I understand that we do like to look a beautiful woman but why change some woman that are already so beautiful to look like plastic Barbie dolls that no woman could ever hope to look like. Another bad quality in doing this to these women is with celebrities. Looking at them in magazines they always look so amazing because of the work that goes into the images, it then makes the celebrities need to work hard to keep up the persona of this beautiful woman they appear to be in these glossy magazines when in reality no body looks that good all the time. I
have some examples of photoshopped celebrities who are made to look better;
I think that in some ways these images can look better, I agree with the air brushing because it doesn’t change completely what the woman looks like. But changing the body shape and hair I think is pretty over the top and defiantly changed the in tier image of the person, although she looks better it is very deceiving to the reader