Airbrushing and the 'Perfect', or 'not so Perfect', Lifestyle

I was watching the news a few nights ago on ITV, a rare occurence at that.......my flatmates usually have control of the XBox, to find that devastating floods had struck parts of Cumbria, a British woman Lady Ashton had been elected as the EU's high representative for foreign affairs and Kate Moss, world famous supermodel had spoken out in a recent interview causing controversy and outrage, having said 'that nothing tastes as good as skinny feels.'

Well in my opinion....I really don't think so....However, this made me think about the lengths that designers, of magazines and internet websites, go in order to create a perfect image that they want to include in a publication or webpage. Just imagine, after a long day in the studio taking photograph after photograph with the aim of promoting whatever it is they are doing, the image is far from complete. I'm not saying all designers do this but there are quite a few.

Here is an example of the front cover of a magazine that shows the original photograph of a woman posing. Then there is the image on the front cover of the magazine that has obviously been airbrushed probably using the application 'Photoshop'. As you can see, there are distinct differences between the image of the woman in the photo and when she is appearing on the front cover of the magazine. Everything has been made to appear slimmer, such as her face and cheeks, giving her a more prominent jaw line, as well as her arms, which have also been made to appear thinner. If you compare her lower half and how her legs are crossed underneath her garment, a difference in size is also noticeable. They seem a lot slimmer than in the original photograph.



The comment made by Kate Moss seemed to cause a lot of hype in the media, due to the fact that she is a celebrity that will and does influence the younger generation and probably older generations aswell. People in this day like to buy into a particular lifestyle, whether they are influenced by various products and brand names within a market or very much influenced by the behaviour of celebrities that they may look up to and idolize, this is still categorized as a sort of 'lifestyle'.

In a recent article "France considers Warning Labels for Airbrushed Photos' from http://www.time.com it said........

'The drive against airbrushed photos is being headed by conservative parliamentarian Valérie Boyer, who says the widespread use of digital technology to alter images is feeding the public a steady visual diet of falsified people, places and products. This artificial reality leads people to expect perfection from themselves and the world in an impossible way, she says......
“When writers take a news item or real event and considerably embellish it, they are required to alert readers by calling the work fiction, a novel or a story based on dramatized facts. Why should it be any different for photograph… It’s creating parallel worlds: one in which everything in ads and photos is gorgeous, slim, chic and what we aspire to, and our daily reality of imperfection, normality and frustration that we can’t be like those other people who — literally — don’t exist.”'

So what do you think about this issue? Should photographs be published with warning signs if they have been airbrushed to show the audience that they are not real life images but infact have been altered to appear 'perfect'. In my opinion, I do not think that this would make people less likely to want to buy into such a lifestyle. I do think however, that such images effect particularly the younger generation of this day and age. Maybe the only way to stop such influences is to ban airbrushing of images and use of dangerously thin models in advertisement.....but somehow I can't see this happening in the near future.