think you look a bit chunky in a photo?

[emmelinemay]

nevermind. Photoshop can fix it.

I knew photoshop was used a lot to tidy up edges, remove the odd bulge, take away blemishes, and generally make ordinary women feel inadequate my making other ordinary women look unrealistically beautiful.

But that's just scary.

Comments

[glamgothruthy.livejournal.com]

i've seen that before - i just dunno what to say.. but i'm sure there is a femminist/fattist rant in there somewhere...

[emmelinemay.livejournal.com]

i'm sure there is. ESPECIALLY with the title of the video - "turning a big fat chick into a tiny hot little model"

'big fat chicks' aren't hot? tiny is? al in the eye of the beholder mate, all in the eye.

[cookwitch.livejournal.com]

Heh. According to a Jamaican guy at Strawberry Fair, I was hot because I was fat!

[gaius-octavian.livejournal.com]

Painters have been doing this sort of thing to (for) men and women for centuries, tho'. Didn't Henry VIII marry Anne Boleyn after seeing her painting, only to discover she looked nothing like that in person?

[emmelinemay.livejournal.com]

if you really can't see how that's a totally different thing, i can't even be arsed to argue with you

[obsessive-katy.livejournal.com]

It was Anne of Cleves, who he dubbed the 'Flanders Mare' because she looked like a horse in real life.

xx

[sushidog.livejournal.com]

Given that she was (allegedly) already pregnant by the time he married her, I think he knew what she looked like! :-)

[sushidog.livejournal.com]

The thing that really annoys me about that clip is that my first thought was "Ooh, I wonder if someone could photoshop a picture of me so I'd look gorgeous".
Gah.

[emmelinemay.livejournal.com]

I wonder if someone could photoshop a picture of me so I'd look gorgeous

it's the prevalence of pictures like this that make you think you aren't good enough in the first place, when YOU ARE.

the VAST majority of pictures of women in the media (and a lot on the internet of us lot₁) are photoshopped. LIke i say - 'ordinary women' - women JUST as pretty/unique/gorgeous in their own way - are made to look unrealistically pretty and that makes the rest of us feel inadequate.

_{1 - But not mine, as i fail at photoshop. I can just about remove red eye.}

[sushidog.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I know, it's infuriating; we're made to feel bad about a little bit of cellulite, or body hair, or just about being a normal healthy weight or whatever, because think that beautiful women don't have those things, but actually, they _do_, they just have them air-brushed out. Grr.

[obsessive-katy.livejournal.com]

OK, not really saying much due to the quality of the publication, but Sunday's Observer came with the monthly Woman section. *shudder*

On the front they had a curvy lady and some quote about being the next big thing or something. Inside they had 4 pages with fashion pictures involving women who are size 16. (you can see the article here)

But there was something really wrong with the pictures. They all looked plasticky and unreal - heavily airbrushed to get rid of the dimpled skin and cellulite but still retaining the belly bulge.

I thought it was really bad as they seemed to be saying that they were showing real women...and then they go and smooth them over anyway.

Makes me angry.

xx

[obsessive-katy.livejournal.com]

ACK! The headline was actually the vomitous 'Who's a Big Girl Then?' ARGH!

xx

[sushidog.livejournal.com]

Interesting article; it's a shame the photos aren't attached, i'd have been interested to see them!

There's an artist who takes photos of ordinary women doing ordinary things, but topless, and I was looking at his webpage yesterday; lots of photos of women in various locations in New York, SOme of the photos are really beautiful, but one thing that struck me was how many of the women in them clearly felt quite negatively about their bodies; even (perhaps even especially) those who had perfectly lovely figures felt fat and imperfect, and thought the photo of them was ugly. I think it's simply because we're not used, as that article says, to seeing beautiful photos of women who are not skinny and "perfectly" proportioned, so when we look at ourselves, we see someone big and ungainly, rather than someone normal-sized and gorgeous.

[glamgothruthy.livejournal.com]

My friend stompyboots put it best (where i saw this first)

Part of me is disgusted that we feel the need to turn attractive people into attractive skeletons, the rest of me is disgusted with myself for wanting to hire the video artist to Photoshop my life. Womanhood rocks.

[sushidog.livejournal.com]

Hear hear.

[emmelinemay.livejournal.com]

absolutely.

I even said to a colleague, 'if only you could photoshop yourself in real life'.

Sad that we can't be happy with the way we look as we are.

[ephemera.livejournal.com]

pity that she's so much more attractive in the original picture, really. It's an impressive bit of art, mind, but both the philosophy behind it, and that people will persist in assuming that photos are true, makes it a tad bit depressing ....

[emmelinemay.livejournal.com]

even with *knowing* something is heavily photoshopped, and telling yourself it is so, doesn't make it any more likely to help self esteem, does it?

[jaketherat.livejournal.com]

I thought she was hotter as a 'big fat chick'.

[cookwitch.livejournal.com]

I just watched the whole thing. I think I sat in horrified fascination.

photoshop me

[pa76.livejournal.com]

I photoshop photos that I appear in to get rid of spots and stuff. That's not too vain is it?

Re: photoshop me

[emmelinemay.livejournal.com]

you're not turning yourself into someone completely different, though. I'm not clever enough with photoshop to do that, so i just don't put up any photos of me with spots, or wear loads of makeup!!!