Faith Hill must have taken the "skinny pills" advertised on the magazine in order to "lose"
so much body mass for this Redbook cover
Check out the celebrity before and after pics on this professional photo retouching site. Just hit "portfolio" on the top navigation.
Absolutely fascinating. They'll just add big boobs. Remove sections of rib cages for that more svelte look. Cut out whole chunks of Beyonce's ass. Actually draw in a smile on Julia Stiles' face that wasn't there. And basically cover all the skin with this sort of...ice-cream finish. I can't even tell if Halle Berry's skin was lightened...it was just covered in this shiny flawless filter all the other photo subjects had.
Now, I realize the explanation for these extreme Photoshop alterations -- it's just Hollywood, just fantasy. But it's something Hollywood and the advertising industry and the media created within us, instilled within us from an early age. And now we act like it's self-evident -- that since we work long hours in a dreary world, we "deserve" to see no wrinkles or fat or perceived imperfections of any kind in our entertainment. That it's our "escape," and what we need more than anything is escape.
But I think, especially for women (though I'm sure for more than a few men as well), it sets up an unattainable, patently false goal. It sets up a sometimes mild, sometimes awful mass psychosis based on a false reality demurely presenting itself as true.
No, we do not "need" perfect faces in our media. We don't "need" that sort of escape. We don't even necessarily "need" escape. That's all been taught to us, and it's been taught to us for two reasons: 1) To sell stuff, and 2) To lower our ability to both use critical thinking and be proactive in changing the world around us.
The magazines should just hire comic book artists.
I honestly prefer the before picture in every case in that site's portfolio. A lot of that is just using photoshop to make up for lazy work on the photographer's part. Why bother to set the lighting up right when you can photoshop? Very similar to comics. Photoshop has become a crutch of hack artists. Why bother with nice rendering when you can photoshop in some light effects?
ReplyDeleteI work with a million women, (and before you guys out there say "lucky you", please, spare me.) and I see this all the time. They think what they see is real, and then reinforce the fantastic perceptions with gossip. I've had to have more than one talk with a young lass on the road to making themselves ill or even just Tramp City. Scary. Turn off your TV.
ReplyDeleteThe second model, "Amber," is so much prettier on the left. I don't think I've ever dated a girl who used heavy (or often any) make-up. I think this is another instance of competitive women hurting one another more than anything. It makes sense to me that some deluded actress would look at doctored pictures of herself, then the mirror, and become a plastic surgery victim. It doesn't make sense to me that after centuries of make-up, lighting, and "artistic interpretation," a level-headed woman would still fall for this crap. Again though, this is about women getting over on one another, or bagging "the" guy instead of "a" guy as a form of validation. It just makes me sad.
ReplyDeleteOn a side note, how disappointed was I when Kim Kardashian's badonkadonk was airbrushed to oblivion by Playboy Magazine, probably at her insistence? Way to miss the point, guys...
Even our beautiful people aren't beautiful enough. I am not a fan of makeup or high heels or anything that forces women to go through a lot of effort, or endure physical discomfort to meet some kind of perceived standard of beauty. I think it is sick that every feature that makes a person uniquely themselves seems to get averaged out to something else that decidedly isn't them. Look at a loved one. Don't you love their slight imperfections as much as every other bit of them? Perhaps even more than other features. My wife's eyes? My daughter's eyes? Nothing like the sun, that's for darn sure. I hate that an unatainable misguided sense of what is beautiful is out there constantly being waved in everyone's face. Mostly it is to sell things.
ReplyDeleteTwo fun games that came out of this that would not have been an issue without the bizarre body modification are:
On the sixth picture in the top row (I think), the woman with the open top and bikini bottoms or whatever, start with your cursor off of her, and the make a quick fart noise while moving your cursor onto her.
On the picture of Cameron Diaz(I think... last one on the right, top row) Start singing staying alive and move the cursor off the picture then back on in time with the song.
I like people that look like people. I like people that are comfortable in their skin. Stupid things like that create barriers against that and reinforce some of the worst things about human nature.
The second model Amber looks like former co-host of G4/Tech TV Canada's Call for Help and former CityTV employee Amber McArthur.
ReplyDeleteNow I've seen a lot of Amber McArthur on TV over the last few years and have actually met her in person, and yeah the "before" picture is more true to her real appearance and IMHO far more attractive that the "after" shot.
Part of Amber's appeal is that she comes off like your sister or the girl next door, and that over-maniped photo fails to capture that in the final product.
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ReplyDeletephotochopping has always bothered me. especially as a photographer, so many of those celeb pictures on that site lose the depth and quirks that make them interesting portraits, or really just as people.
ReplyDeleteand others really just needed more conscious photography rather than this "snap and shop later" ideology.
and i must be a sick individual because i think they looked more attractive in the real pictures!
you're right though about hiring comic artists, photomanipulated celebs don't look like real people, and neither do a majority of comic book characters, unrealistic waists and chests for all!
i actually titled my blog "smuggling cantaloupes" with the idea of body image given to us by pop culture.
and it has nothing to do with breasts as i'm sure most disappointed googlers have found out, it came from how ridiculous i found batman's muscles in "the long halloween"
This stuff bugs the hell out of me.
ReplyDeleteI work with an office full of women, too...all different shapes sizes and colors and all of them are beautiful people in their own way. And that's not being nice, they really are all attractive people.
I remember when they made Kate Winslet skinny, as if she's not pretty and her body type is somehow alien to most women OR men.
And it's not like Faith Hill isn't already skinny! Sheez.
I know photoshop is commonplace, but sometimes I like the reality.
you have no idea how much usually gets changed. My wife works for a company in NY that specializes in photo retouching. they work with all the magazines , hi end photographers like Annie Liebowitz. Every thing, every photo gets retouched.
ReplyDeleteThe really screwy thing is that the height of 3D characters strives for the before pictures. The more gritty, dirty, veiny, the better for CG.
ReplyDeleteMy wife worked in the movie industry for years and 90 percent of the actors I met didn't need the photoshop "help". It was usually at the insistence of their pr people or the movie pr people that all the digital enhancements get done...
ReplyDeleteArrrOOOooo!
Y'know what's disturbing about that Julia Stiles image? They actually had to make her look less skinny than she actually was.
ReplyDeleteAnyone hear about the 90210 poster? You know, this image? The one in the headband is Jessica Stroup.
My wife is a regular reader of Us Weekly...a rag she knows is a cancer on the American public, but reads anyway...like a smoker who just can't quit. Anyway, they had a big cover story on Mlles. Jessica Strout and Shenae Grimes. One of the items they purport (or, more explicitly, that my wife purports they purport) is that Ms. Strout actually required retouching on that photo to make her LARGER.
Apparently, her 5'8", 100 pound form was deemed kind of...well...creepy-looking. It's sort of how I think when I look at the whole cast. They're skeletons with skin stretched over them.
I was thinking along the same lines as Shannon up there. A lot of the "problems" would have been solved by better lighting. Didn't they used to know how to light people to make them "attractive" back in the 30s, 40s and 50s? Sure they airbrushed then, but a lot of it was done with rear-lighting and baby spots. It's like now they're trying to do the more naturalistic lighting that came in later, but they're still expecting unnatural results.
ReplyDeleteStupid!
Funny how in some of the photos they worked to make the subject thinner, but in one of the b&w shots of an actual fashion model and with Eva Longoria, they actually added weight. They widened the model's hips and they put inches and smoothness on Longoria's frighteningly emaciated arm.
Cameron Diaz, however, I've known for a long time was merely the construct of careful Photoshopping and airbrushing.
And it's not just the women. They evidently do a ton of work on men, too. Fascinating.
Well, if nothing else it's certainly made me feel much better about my own appearance.
Oh, and that blonde model's photo you put in your entry is a trip! It's like, "Yeah, we could've put actual make up on her and she would've looked gorgeous yet still individualistic, but we decided it was better to use a computer to extract any ounce of humanity from her face while tarting her up like a prostitute."
ReplyDeleteA lot of the after photos approach the uncanny valley.
Amber! Weird to pop up on this website and see technogeek Amber MacArthur tarted up. Its a dis-service to her (course I am partial being a fanboy).
ReplyDeleteCheck out http://ambermac.com/ and her video podcast at http://commandn.typepad.com/ to see what she really looks. Whatever that studio did with the touching up, it didn't even come close. She is one of those beauties where less is more in the makeup department.
Faith Hill's retouched arm doesn't even look real. "Here's a steel pole we wrapped in skin for you to lean on, Ms. Hill!"
ReplyDeleteHow bizarre.
ReplyDeleteTo explain the Amber photo:
ReplyDeleteAmber used these photos to demonstrate some of what can be done in Photoshop for a show called Homepage she hosted for a brief while.
Along the same lines, now there's a beautification engine.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2008/10/08/fashion/20081009-SKIN_index.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1223660411-JOXkkvYoS3XJ3tUDNzSP6w