Spot The Difference.

Spot The Difference.

Ever looked through a magazine and thought to yourself how beautiful the girl is, how thin she is, blemish free and how smooth her skin is?  How she looks so perfect? I am sure a lot of us have, but ever wondered what she looked like before all that makeup, before all the editing and the airbrushing.

 Ever since I flicked through magazines, that’s all I ever wondered, I would never look and say “wow she looks beautiful”, my first reaction would always be “I wonder what she looked like before.” I guess thats just me though since i have always looked at the world differently. The amount of work done on models is extensive and look very realistic, to the point that young girls from the age as young as 8years old aspire to look like the girls in the magazines that aren’t even real. Fashion magazines have started growing vastly, retouching and airbrushing are getting more and further away from resembling reality. 

There is a debate about whether magazines should tell the audience that they have airbrushed and edited the model, yet magazines argue that the audience already know so why should they write it. However I was with one of my mother’s friends a while back and she actually had no idea about models being edited, she had always thought they were just like that, until I showed her a picture that I edited of a model, before and after, and she was shocked as she realized how powerful editing could be. Rather than embracing the beauty of human flaws, the media is now exclusively promoting perfection. 

A very famous Ad was with 52year old Madonna posing for spring/summer Dolce and Gabanna. We had all seen Madonna’s photos before with her very muscular arms and extremely veiny hands and saggy neck, after all she is 52, however when the photoshoot campaign was released all of a sudden her veiny arms vanished, her legs and arms were tones, her face was smooth and she looked like a 21 year old. 

 This project was done to show that girls are all different sizes and have different features but in the end their all beautiful and no one should make you feel like you’re not beautiful. Seeing retouched photos can influence others to feel bad about themselves because they look at the retouched photo and think they want to be just like that, yet its unattainable. The whole idea is that the perfect body and face is what YOU are happy with without being influenced by the media and their unrealistic images. Years ago it was a different story, it was rare to see airbrushing and retouching in magazines and now around 77,000 advertisements are seen before an average girl turns 12 and most have been retouched. I wouldn’t say retouching should be banned, because in order to sell products, retouching does a very good job; but I would like to see the up rise of magazines mentioning the fact that the image has been retouched and creating awareness about the reality of retouching.

Here are a few images before and after, makeup and retouching. The stages show what goes on, in the process of professional shoots in the industry. It starts off without makeup, then with makeup and then to the retouching. In the end the girl can look completely different, and this is what we see in all the adverts and magazines. I present to you the stages of retouching photos and the power it can have on the viewers. I don't have much experience with photoshop like professionals do so this definitely shows to you that if i can do this, what can the professionals do with all the technology, techniques and days they have to edit models photos?  Each edit took me about 10-15mins each to do, and in the industry it can take from at least 2 days to edit one photo. Retouching vary from making someone look thinner around the face,body and feautures, making the eyes bigger, creating a volumed look in the hair, skin lighting, defining makeup and hair, removing blemishs the list goes on.

 

Can you spot the difference? (Click the images to enlarge them)

 

 

 

This is exactly how its done.

So in my opinion… I believe every girl or woman is beautiful in their own way, and only ugly in the eyes of the insecure. No one is ‘perfect’ and I think society needs to stop portraying the idea of perfection. Everyone has different body shapes, face features and skin tones, so why should the media say one particular thing is perfect? One may think I’m ugly, another person may think I’m ‘perfect’. I think retouching is okay but only to a limit, if it makes the woman look like a completely different woman then I really don’t agree with portraying the unattainable. I take a lot of fashion photos but i generally only edit the lighting and eye bags, i never edit the face features or body because it then changes the girl completely, and other viewers may think they want to look like that yet its not real.


This Tuesday i will upload a video i did for College on my Blog,but if you want to have a look at it now you can on. VIMEO


To those who celebrate Christmas have a wonderful time and those who don't have a lovely holiday!


See you next Friday! 

Frozen Vanity x0x

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