What is REAL?

Can you trust what you see?

Who said it?

• "I wish I looked like Cindy Crawford."

retouching• Computers have ushered in a whole new era in the construction of the ideal

image. Digital retouching goes far beyond airbrushing and makes it possible to dramatically alter faces and bodies, even to rearrange them. The July 2003 issue of Redbook featured a grinning Julia Roberts on the cover, wearing a shiny red dress. "The Real Julia" declares the copy. This turned out to be unintentionally ironic, since the photograph is a composite. It is indeed Julia's head and body, but they weren't together at the time. A photograph of her head was placed on an entirely different photograph of her body. A closer look reveals that the head is a bit out of proportion and seems too large for the body. Some critics feel this was done deliberately in order to create a childlike image. Adding to this impression is the fact that the dress completely hides her shape. Julia was upset, but not as upset as Jennifer Aniston was when Redbook did a similar thing to her in its June issue. Her cover shot was a composite of three different photos and made her look so disjointed that she considered legal action.

I suppose Julia should be grateful that her head was put on her own body. Years before in a famous ad for the movie Pretty Woman, her head was put on another woman's thinner, more perfect body. A few years before that, a cartoon drawing of Oprah Winfrey's head was put on Ann-Margret's body for a TV Guide cover. As computer retouching has become a mainstay of advertising, this happens more and more often. Models in television commercials, as well as in print ads, are now often composites. One woman's face, another woman's hair, another woman's hands, yet another woman's legs-all combined to form one perfect woman.

All media are constructions

Created for a variety of purposes

Elizabeth Vargas

• Marie Claire published a photo many feel lacks journalistic tact. The magazine’s December 2006 issue ran an interview with ABC news anchor Elizabeth Vargas, in which the 20/20 host discussed the difficulties involved with being a new mom with a busy career. To illustrate how hard life as a working mother can be, Marie Claire photoshopped a photo to look like Vargas seated at the anchor desk, breastfeeding a baby. Vargas disliked the picture, but maintained her sense of humour.

• "Elizabeth was more than happy to sit for the interview but was disturbed that the magazine would set aside basic journalistic standards to photoshop her head onto a fake image. Vargas did joke that her real baby is cuter, that she is proud to breastfeed her newborn but wouldn't do it at the anchor desk and that she wouldn't be caught dead in that ugly gold blouse!"

girls

Girlpowerhttp://demo.fb.se/e/girlpower/retouch/retouch/index.html

Madonna

Madonna

Gwen Stefani

Britney Spears

“video” Britney: 2007

Halle Berry

Beyonce

Fergie

Rosie O’Donnell

• i saw the view black suit photoon drudgeand i vote yesit was photo-shoppedlook at the amount of white spacebetween my arm and bodybarbara and elisabeth seem to vanishthere in my underarm thinnestyes i sayphotoshop

Katie Couric

“…image had been “subtly smoothed and shaped into an icon of tragedy”

bad teeth

Michael Jackson (cover of Ebony magazine)

Princess Eugenie

Kimora Lee Simmons (2008)

Mariah Carey (2008)

Destiny’s Child

CV

swimsuit

face

hair

Kiera Knightly

Kate Hudson – poster for Fool’s Gold

America Ferrera

Faith Hill

“The Annotated Guide to Making Faith Hill HOT”

1. scalp

2. crows feet

3. cheeks

4. earlobe & mole

5. neck

6. lips

7. clavicle and dress strap “welt”

8. back “fat”

9. hand

10. butt

11. arm

Amanda Bynes

Britney Murphy

MORE magazine/September 2002

• "There's a reality to the way I look without my clothes on," Jamie Lee Curtis says. "I don't have great thighs. I have very big breasts and a soft, fatty little tummy. And I've got back fat. People assume that I'm walking around in little spaghetti-strap dresses. It's insidious -- Glam Jamie, the Perfect Jamie, the great figure, blah, blah, blah. And I don't want the unsuspecting 40-year-old women of the world to think that I've got it going on. It's such a fraud. And I'm the one perpetuating it."

• But not anymore. In an age when divas often use their clout to nix unflattering photos in magazines, Curtis has demanded the opposite: Glam Jamie will pose only if Real Jamie gets equal time. She even knows what this article should be titled. "'True Thighs,'" she declares.

Jamie Lee Curtis

the Shape Women are In• If shop mannequins were real women, they would be too thin to menstruate and bear

children. • There are three billion women on the planet who don't look like supermodels and only

eight who do. • Marilyn Monroe, Hollywood sex goddess, wore a size twelve. • If Barbie were a real woman, she'd have to walk on all fours. Because of her

unrealistic proportions, she could not balance on her long legs and tiptoes. • Also, her narrow body would have room for only half a liver and a few inches of

intestines instead of the usual twenty-six feet. The result would be chronic diarrhea and death from malabsorption of nutrients. (Beauty, eh?)

• The average American woman weighs 144 pounds and wears a size twelve or fourteen.

• One out of every four college-aged women uses unhealthy methods of weight control, including fasting, skipping meals, excessive exercise, laxative abuse, and self-induced vomiting.

• Models in fashion magazines are airbrushed and retouched. In real life they look more like the rest of us than their glossy print images.

• A psychological study in 1995 found that after just three minutes spent looking at models in a fashion magazine, 70% of women reported feeling depressed, guilty, and ashamed of their bodies.

• Twenty years ago models weighed eight percent less than the average woman. Today they weigh twenty-three percent less, and many fall into an anorexic weight range.

Liv Tyler

Liv Tyler says she spent years worrying about her weight – until she became a mom.

"I've been a model and actress since I was 14, so I've been on a diet my whole life," the actress, 29, says in the March issue of Glamour.

"But once I gave birth, I didn't want to think about myself or feel insecure about my career; I wanted to think about my child. So I stopped worrying about diets."

She also weighs in on the debate over super-thin actresses and models. "I definitely think the girls look too skinny now," she says. "I'm friends with Helena Christensen and Linda Evangelista, and I remember Linda telling me that when she was a model [in the '90s], a sample size was a 6 or an 8. Now a sample dress size is a 0 or a 2. That's pretty alarming. There's a lot of pressure on [the models]. It's not healthy. I can't even imagine what that's like."

Charlize Theron

• “We’re starting to believe that when we see celebrities they’re supposed to look like the magazine covers that they appear on. That’s just not true. That’s 4,000 professionals plastering make-up and doing hair and wearing big gowns and air-brushing. That’s not reality.”

Usher

Bad day at work?

… no … clever editing!

Credits

• http://www.media-awareness.ca/english/issues/stereotyping/women_and_girls/women_beauty.cfm

• http://wetzel.psych.rhodes.edu/223webproj/bodyimage/food.html

• http://homepage.mac.com/gapodaca/digital/bikini/index.html

• http://finearts.uvic.ca/~rzarchik/tofc.html

• http://www.darwinmag.com/read/120103/manipulation.html

• http://ww4.lhj.com/lhj/story.jhtml?storyid=/templatedata/lhj/story/data/jamieleecurtistruethighs_08212002.xml

• http://glennferon.com.nyud.net:8090/index.html