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Main >> News Listing >> June 2004 >> Article ID 5039
 Don't Touch Me Up | Type: Internet Article |
| | Helen Lewis believes we should stop lying to ourselves about our bodies | Jun 2004 | by Helen Lewis
Summary:
Digital manipulation of photographs allows images of women to circulate which have no basis in reality, and although they may exert pressure on magazines not to talk about airbrushing, the phenomenon leaves celebrities no better off. We are sold the impossibly smooth, glowing women of GQ, FHM, Vogue and all the rest, with perfect hair and skin and carefully chosen clothes, and their flip side, the 'candid' photos in Heat and the tabloids of Britney with a spot, or Christina Aguilera with a spare tyre...
Read on for the whole article. |
On his wedding night, Victorian art critic John Ruskin was unable to perform sexually, and explained to his new wife, 20 year old Euphemia Gray, that he was unwilling to see her body ravaged by pregnancy. Accepting this, Effie agreed to a compromise whereby he would re-marry her when she was 25. However, when the time came, Ruskin extended the deadline to a time of his choosing - never. During a fight, Effie learned the real reason for his impotence. He had been overwhelmingly disgusted to learn on their wedding night that women (unlike the marble statues and paintings he had studied) have pubic hair. After a test to prove Effie's virginity, the original marriage was dissolved.
Staged or digitally altered photographs are forbidden for newspaper use, unless specifically labelled, because of their potential to distort reality and convey a false or damaging impression. There have been several famous cases recently: a photo purportedly showing Senator John Kerry and Vietnam opponent Jane Fonda sharing a stage at an anti-war rally was calculated to damage the former's presidential bid by association with the actress' provocative activism. Piers Morgan lost his job at the Mirror over staged photos of abuse by British soldiers in Iraqi prisons, even though the fact that abuse occurred is itself not disputed. Even photos which are labelled as digital montages may be illegal: in 1992, actress Sarah Lancashire sued the Daily Sport for superimposing her head on the body of a topless model. Even though the photos had been labelled as a mock-up, the court still ruled that a damaging impression had been conveyed, and awarded her substantial damages.
But these kinds of pictures are the tip of the iceberg: they are highly visible and highly contrived, and are often brought to the public's attention through legal action. More insidious is the ubiquitous use of digital manipulation in magazine photos.
Unlike newspapers, magazines are not bound by a code of conduct which forbids the use of "inaccurate, misleading or distorted material, including pictures". On the rare occasions that the airbrushing of celebrity photos is brought to public attention, it's because it has stepped so far past the borders of reality as to be unbelievable. Kate Winslet's GQ cover and interview photos are a good example. Accompanying an article in which Winslet proclaimed, "All I know from the men I've ever spoken to is that they like girls to have an arse on them", the pictures of the normally curvy Winslet were particularly hard to digest. Not only that, but in the most ridiculous picture of the set the reflection in the mirror clearly shows a normal sized person, revealing the extent of the alteration.
But the Winslet photos are only well-known because they took an actress famous for speaking out on weight issues, and presented her as a twiglet. Thousands - perhaps hundreds of thousands - of other images in magazines are more subtly altered. In the controversy, GQ's editor Dylan Jones admitted, "Almost no picture that appears in GQ... has not been digitally altered in some way". That seems staggering: an admission that all these celebrity photos are visual lies. But finding anyone willing to talk about the extent of digital alteration and the forms that it takes is extremely difficult. No one wants to break ranks and fall foul of PR companies and celebrity agents. I spoke to several art editors at successful men's magazines: all were extremely reluctant to discuss airbrushing, and refused outright to say if their magazines had guidelines over what level of airbrushing was acceptable. Dan, FHM's Deputy Art Director, said that it was a "sensitive subject" and couldn't give me any more information than the software packages used by the magazines. He did, however, let slip that the glamour shoots used airbrushing far more frequently than the fashion spreads: "they're all models. They look pretty good anyway." Think about the implications of that statement, and it's horrifying - the fact that magazine readers are looking at titillating images of people who aren't actually very attractive.
This is also where poor old Ruskin and his aversion to pubic hair comes back in. Collectively, these images are portraying a reality which does not, and will never, exist, and it harms us as a society to accept them. It's one thing to accept that celebrities in photos will have been styled, manicured and flatteringly lit. Perhaps they will even have undergone surgery. That's their right, and it is their business to look good. It's completely different to have been nipped and tucked inside some photo-editing software.
It can only ever harm relations between the sexes - because, let's face it, the vast majority of airbrushed images are of women, whether for male or female consumption. And the range of undesirable bodily attributes to be digitally removed is always growing, until some photos show women with barely any skin texture, knees or elbows at all. The effect of digital manipulation is to tell women that it's possible to be five foot two and have forty inch legs (as in a famously absurd photo of Emma Bunton); or to be a size six and not have visible ribs; or to reach forty without cellulite and with breasts round their necks; or to have no definition on their stomachs either of fat or muscle. Men are told that they can realistically expect these things in a woman, and can only ever be disappointed in the real women they meet.
Digital manipulation of photographs allows images of women to circulate which have no basis in reality, and although they may exert pressure on magazines not to talk about airbrushing, the phenomenon leaves celebrities no better off. In fact, it creates a dual market for photos. We are sold the impossibly smooth, glowing women of GQ, FHM, Vogue and all the rest, with perfect hair and skin and carefully chosen clothes, and their flip side, the 'candid' photos in Heat and the tabloids of Britney with a spot, or Christina Aguilera with a spare tyre, or Catherine Zeta Jones being minutely overweight two weeks after giving birth. Women simultaneously torture themselves by comparison with the impossible perfection of the glossies, and indulgence in the reassuring photos of the same stars looking, well, real.
And as if that wasn't bad enough, there's a more sinister side to airbrushing - the cover of Loaded pictured to the immediate left was originally a photograph of Mel B in a bikini. Whilst adding the bees, her bikini 'disappeared', and she threatened to sue. Melanie Sykes had a similar experience, as did Kylie, whose thong disappeared from a photo recreating the famous "Tennis Girl Scratching Her Bum" photo. Luckily, Kylie and Melanie took it on the chin, but I surely can't be the only one who finds something creepy about photographers and art directors removing women's clothes from photos (without their consent) for use on magazine covers?
There's no way to return the airbrushing genie to his bottle, but the time has surely come for the conspiracy of silence about its practice to end. Unfortunately, as long as images of unnaturally perfect women remain a sure way to sell magazines, it's unlikely we'll be seeing realistic buttocks any time soon. |
 Source: Oxford Student | |
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| Pages: [1] | anonymiss: Wow....
| Posted on: June 4th, 2004, 09:12 PM | |
| | Pages: [1] |
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