Links for Articles

National Centre for Eating Disorders

Photo Editing New Reality

Overcoming Distorted Realities

The Media and Body Image: If looks could kill

From Jacky to Tacky

Controversy: Modelling at Thirteen

Teen Vogue - unfairly accused

Half of girls 14-15 unhappy with their figures

What do I want to be when i grow up? SKINNY

Banana Republic - erases models knee

Multiple Photoshop fails

The Body project

Scandals of Classic Hollywood

Starvation Diet: why it could make us live longer

Lady Gaga's Airbrushed Vogue cover

Women try surgery for the masculine 'Lowbrow' look

Lady Gaga's 'fuller figure'

Its not just one thing, it's everything...

Out in the world there are millions of products for women that claim to give women the perfect body. For example shops such as Ann Summers and Agent Provocateur sell Lingerie, Hosiery, Swimwear etc, not just for the cover up of certain areas, but to make the female 'feel their most sensual and seductive anytime, anywhere.' The advertisements for these types of products show women with perfect bodies wearing the product and promises every woman that she too will look like this if she wears these stockings or this plunge bra. However these women are usually highly airbrushed and do not actually look like the women themselves.

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Cosmetics

There are often sections in Magazines about beauty and cosmetics. They show miracle treatments, remedies and new products available to us. These are here to show us women how we should look and how buy using these products and remedies we will supposedly look like a perfect woman should. 

False Advertisements in Fashion Editorial

Some advertisements are now shown in the form of editorial, as if written by somebody like you or me, to make the reader believe that what they are reading is from a real person who has tried the product and it happy with the result, however, these articles are often written by writers for a small profit on their part. They are commissioned by the creators of the product to give a biased view and false opinion of a beauty product to make women believe it works and make them want to buy the product.

'We're being unfairly accused': Teen Vogue dismisses 14-year-old girls during meeting after anti-Photoshop protest

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An article from the Daily Mail shows how a group of young girls stood protesting outside Teen Vogue's offices in July. They were protesting against the use of Photoshop in their Magazines and asked Teen Vogues to commit to putting images of real girls in their Magazine. Out of all the girls protesting outside the offices, a couple of these girls, who started the Protest were allowed to meet with the Teen Vogue Editors. Whilst inside, Carina Cruz and Emma Stydahar, handed the Editors a petition containing over 20,000 signatures. One of the Girls told of how whence inside, there was no handshake, no greeting, none of that, they just told them to 'sit here - you wanted this meeting, what did you want to say'.

The girls told of how the Editors were quite rude to them, they girls explained what the petition was about, what it was for and the Editors began to pick at the unpublished Magazine, choosing pages containing post-it notes, within these pages were images of what Teen Vogue believed were diverse images. The Girls stated that - 'Most of them were thin African-American models. It was a good start - we love seeing women of color in these magazines. But two or three an issue - and all of them super stick skinny - isn't what we're looking for'. 

One of the girls added that the meeting consisted of the editors telling the teenagers that they hadn't 'done their homework', and that 'Teen Vogue is a great magazine, being unfairly accused.'

Both Emma and Carina were inspired by 14-year-old fellow Spark member Julia Bluhm's recent quest and anti-Photoshop protest against Seventeen magazine.

(Copy) Jezebel wrote: 'What Emma and Carina are asking for goes beyond banning Photoshop. They want a wider variety of faces, disclosure if a pimple is removed - a magazine they can relate to.' 

As it states in their petition, the girls only want magazines to stop altering natural bodies and faces so that real girls can be 'the new standard of beauty'.

The petition continues: 'It's time for an end to the digitally enhanced, unrealistic "beauty" we see in the pages of magazines.'

The girls also explained their reason for targeting Teen Vogue, simply because they see the magazine as the leader in its teen-targeted field, with the most power to affect change.

Teen Vogue’s Senior Public Relations Director, Erin Kaplan, said in a statement: 'Teen Vogue makes a conscious and continuous effort to promote a positive body image among our readers. 

'We feature healthy models on the pages of our magazine and shoot dozens of non-models and readers every year and do not retouch them to alter their body size. Teen Vogue pledges to continue this practice.'

'Schoolgirl's protest against magazine airbrushing is a success as Seventeen vows never to alter models' bodies again'

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A recent article by the daily mail explains how a 14 year old girl named Julia Bluhm had collected 84,000 signatures against the airbrushing and editing of models in magazines. The girl had staged a protest against Seventeen Magazines use of Photoshop to alter and airbrush its models. The editor-in-chief of seventeen, Ann Shoket, responded to Julia Bluhm's petition with a letter in a recent issue. She vowed to never change the shape of girls bodies or faces in her magazine.

Ann Shoket recognised that her magazine had been contacted by many readers before, who felt that Seventeen was digitally enhancing its photos a lot and wondered if the magazine had 'gone too far'. Teenager gathered outside Seventeen's New York office in protest against the use of airbrushing two months ago. it was then that the 14 year old created an online petition against the teen magazines use of editing, in hopes that it would change its Photoshopping policies and use more realistic images to make Teenagers feel better about themselves.

The protesting teenagers also wanted Seventeen to commit to printing one unaltered photo spread per month - which they have agreed to do. This is a great victory for Julia Bluhm and teenage girls everywhere. With the success of what she has achieved with Seventeen magazine, Julia Bluhm has moved onto Teen Vogue, in which she started a new online petition asking for the magazine to follow in the footsteps of Seventeen.

Julia Bluhm said - during the protest outside the office of Seventeen in May - "I know how much pictures in the media have an effect in the self esteem of girls and their body image." I agree with this statement completely. Julia was even invited to the offices of Seventeen after her petition to be involved in an article called 'Give girls Images of real girls'. Ann Shoket included in her letter to the readers an insight into the Magazines photography and why it decided to create a Body Peace Treaty, endorsed by the National Eating Disorders Association and the Commission for Positive Images of Women and Girls, which will hopefully stop young girls stop obsessing about their bodies.  The Treaty says 'the magazine will celebrate every kind of beauty in our pages. Without a range of body types, skin tones, heights, hair textures, the magazine and the world would be boring.'

The petition read: 'Girls want to be accepted, appreciated and likes. And when they don't fit the criteria, some girls like to fix themselves. This can lead to eating disorders, dieting, depression and low self-esteem.'

Julia Bluhm did an amazing job by lust changing one Magazines perspective, hopefully others will follow.

Meaning

How has image-editing software such as Photoshop, influenced and distorted our observation of the female in fashion editorial (Magazines)?

Image Editing - 

The process of editing images, for example; airbrushing which conceals and alters objects in photographs. People in photographs for magazines are almost always airbrushed to make them look more perfect and make the audience look up to them and want to be more like them. Airbrushing and other ways of image editing can conceal problem skin, it can make people look thinner, make their hair more glossy and generally make them look less and less realistic. However, it can sometimes be used for a good purpose. If a photograph is taken in the wrong light, or the contrast is off or there is specs of dirt on the lens which come out in the photograph, these can all be digitally fixed using image editing software. There are many good and bad points to image editing.


Distorted - 

Giving a misleading or false account or impression. A mutilated view.
- (Oxford Dictionary)


Observation - 

The ability to notice things. For example observing that women in magazines often look different in real life. 


Female - 

A woman.


Fashion Editorial - 

Fashion Photography, usually including models or celebrities which includes a story, usually about the fashion or model/celebrity. 


Photoshop - 

Adobe Photoshop is a Graphics/Image Editing program set and published my Adobe. There are many tools available to the user. You can edit images, graphics, create images and even just vied images in Photoshop. This program is probably the program that most people associate with image editing in Magazines. 


Influenced -
The capacity to have an effect on the character, development or behaviour of someone or something, or the effect itself. 
- (Oxford Dictionary)

'Super Skinny Me'

I recently watched a documentary called 'Super Skinny Me'. Its about two journalists who try to lose as much weight as they can in 5 weeks in a race to become a size double 0. The reasons for this is to show how weight loss is the main female obsession. On average women who diet, spend 31 years of their life on a diet. Women go through extreme lengths to achieve this super skinny look that most celebrities in Hollywood seem to attain. According to a recent survey this look is deemed attractive by 6 out of 10 women in Britain and they see this as the ideal weight/look. Almost every magazine in the world has printed something to do with dieting. For example 'lose 1 stone a week on the Grapefruit diet' etc. Most women would not be able to achieve this look. This upsets a lot of women. Women are losing their confidence looking at over-edited images of celebrities wishing they could look the same, when the celebrities themselves don't even look like that! These images are distorting women's views on their own body image. This documentary shows that by trying to lose weight fast in order to obtain the 'perfect body' that these magazines are showing constantly, you can do your body a lot of harm, you will become miserable, it is just not possible to do without constantly thinking about food and exercise. One of these women had to pull out of this race to size double 0 near the end because she ends up very on edge and so close to an eating disorder in order to be like this skinny models and celebrities. She became that obsessed by losing weight that she started to do whatever she could to lose it. She started to lose control and binge eating and then was taking laxatives. These are some of the effects the media is having on women.

Super Skinny Me Pt1

Super Skinny Me Pt2

Super Skinny Me Pt3

Super Skinny Me Pt4

Super Skinny Me Pt5

3 Key Texts:

• Cyndi Tebbel / Body Snatchers: How the Media Shapes Women / 2002

• Naomi Wolf / The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty are Used Against Women / 1991

• Maggie Wykes / The Media and Body Image: If Looks Could Kill / 2004

The Question:

How has image-editing software such as Photoshop, influenced and distorted our observation of the female in fashion editorial (Magazines)?