Beauty and Editing Practices in Photography
In keeping with a similar theme to my last blog post I want to touch on a subject in this one that seems to be garnering a lot of negative attention as of late. There seems to be quite an uproar among photographers and people alike with regards to how images are being edited for publication in beauty magazines and advertising.
There seems to be an abundance of very poorly edited images being published in magazines and ads in order to create the illusion of the “perfect body” or flawless beauty. I have personally seen some incredibly poor editing of images which are actually getting published in all forms of media. It makes me wonder; who is proofing and approving this work before it gets published? Are they fucking blind? These mistakes, for lack of a better word, couldn’t be more blatant when you look at the image(s). It’s a completely inaccurate representation of the model and utterly inappropriate.
I saw an article about an ad for Victoria’s Secret the other day and it was painfully obvious that the image had been touched up. Apparently this seems to be an ongoing issue for the lingerie company with their Photoshop happy editors. This cannot be helping their company image. I know Victoria’s Secret is not the only company where this subject has been the topic of discussion and criticism but this bone of contention is becoming more and more prevalent in the “beauty” industry.
Not only does this reflect poorly upon the photography industry but more importantly these retouched images are causing a whole other host of problems among our female youth. These photos are sending the wrong message to the young girls/women who are consuming the content. The message being, “it’s in to be thin”. This is not a healthy message to be sending to our younger generation but I digress as this is a whole other topic for a completely separate blog post.
Image courtesy of community.babycenter.com