bodies: re-touching

By now, you’ve undoubtedly seen multiple examples of before-and-after photos that illustrated how re-touching is used to help celebrities and models meet those unrealistic beauty standards we see in the media (see our posts on Katy Perry, a parody Photoshop ad, pre-retouched Playboy pics (NSFW!), Jessica Alba, and Demi Moore and Kim Kardashian). Dolores R. sent in a video of a man emphasizing the other side of the equation — that is, how the “before” body in supplement ads can be manipulated to make the apparent transformation especially dramatic:

For the full collection, see our Re-Touching/Photoshop Pinterest board (NSFW).

Gwen Sharp is an associate professor of sociology at Nevada State College. You can follow her on Twitter at @gwensharpnv.

Cross-posted in Portuguese at Conhecimento Prudente.

A lot of readers were taken with the new parody video, “Fotoshop by Adobé,” that has been making it’s way around the internet. Created by filmmaker Jesse Rosten, the video parodies beauty product commercials that play on and encourage insecurities while promising women magical transformations that will allow them to attain entirely unrealistic beauty standards overnight due to ground-breaking science-y sounding ingredients and processes (“pro-pixel intensifying fauxtanical hydro-jargon microbead extract”). Enjoy!

Thanks to Jessica B., Kate A., Rex S., Emma M.H., Jessica W., finefin, Bernardo, Robin D., Priyanka Mathew (who posts at Culture+Marketing+Politics), runbotrun, Dmitriy T.M., Lots of Models, Tom Megginson, and my colleague Pete La Chapelle for sending it in!

The clothier H&M is in the news this week and Craita, Ann C., and Marjukka O. all sent in links to the story.  It turns out that they are using a mannequin to display their clothes. Nothing new here.  Except that the mannequins are appearing on their website (instead of their brick-and-mortar stores) and they are photoshopping heads of real models onto the figure and changing the skin color, giving it the illusion of being a real person.

The practice is getting plenty of vaguely negative press (ABC, FOX, Guardian, Jezebel). The critique seems to be that the use of a “virtual mannequin” creates even more unrealistic bodily expectations for women than the use of “real” models (with “real” in quotes because of the degree of photoshopping that goes into creating any images of women that appear in fashion-related advertising).

To be honest, I’m having a hard  time feeling that this is either qualitatively or quantitatively different than the range of techniques used to produce impossibly idealized bodies (including photoshopping images, using mannequins in stores, using models with unusual body types, and requiring those women to exercise and diet their bodies to achieve an extreme look even given their biologies).  (In fact, Nadya Lev at Coilhouse has a positive spin on it.)

What is more interesting, in my opinion, is the way this illustrates the deskilling of labor. Models no longer have to have just the right body, nor do they have to be good at modeling (e.g., posing in ways that flatter clothes while simultaneously looking natural, not to mention the endurance and emotion work).  No, instead, modeling is reduced to a pretty face that can be nicely composed.  Everything else is done digitally.

Those in the modeling industry, then, don’t see this as an insult to women everywhere, they see it as an insult to models specifically.  FOX quotes Michael Flutie of E!’s model search show “Scouted” saying:

It is disrespectful and lazy. It is the job of the brand to properly scout for their models and find those that represent their brand in every aspect. They need to take the responsibility of looking deep into the model pool to find the right people instead of digitally creating what they need…

If this continues, models may face the same deteriorating working conditions that factory workers and many other segments of the U.S. workforce have faced: becoming increasingly obsolete.

For more on modeling, see our posts on the invisibility of labor in modeling, the dismal pay in the modeling industry, the fraudulent “model search,” and the contrasting aesthetics for “high” and “low end” modeling (all based on the work of ex-model, now-sociologist, Ashley Mears).

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

The U.K. has passed legislation aimed at reducing the amount of re-touching used in advertising. Sophie R., Dmitriy T.M., and my sister, Keely, sent a link to a news story about two ads, banned this week, for Lancome and Maybelline (both owned by L’Oreal).  The Advertising Standards Authority claimed that the ads were “misleading” and an “exaggeration.”  “On the basis of the evidence we received, the ruling stated, “we could not conclude that the ad image accurately illustrated what effect the product could achieve.”

The Authority, then, is enforcing a simple truth-in-advertising rule.  Still, it’s an impressive victory for activists against a very powerful corporation.  Then again, L’Oreal is getting a lot of attention from the news media (and blogs, erg) and these images are going up everywhere, for free.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Tim, Cindy S., and Kenny V. sent in an interesting story. The Brooklyn-based newspaper Der Tzitung, which targets the Ultra Orthodox Jewish community, published copies of the now-famous photo of President Obama and his staff in the Situation Room during the Navy SEALs operation that killed Osama bin Laden. Here’s the original (via the New York Daily News):

However, the version of the photo that ran in Der Tzitung had been photoshopped to remove the two women in the room, including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (initially posted at Failed Messiah):

We’ve seen this before. Usually the argument for deleting women or girls from photos is that they are sexually suggestive or show women interacting with men in ways that are considered inappropriate by the Ultra Orthodox. Whether that’s the case here, or whether it was discomfort showing a woman in a position of significant political power, the effect is to rewrite history to erase the role of women in political decision-making.

UPDATE: While this post led to a lot of interesting discussions, some individuals also posted problematic and offensive comments about the Orthodox community. Due to a family emergency I was overwhelmed and distracted and did not monitor the comments closely at the time, and thus those comments have remained up for the past week. I am going to delete some offensive or inappropriate comments, but I apologize that they were left up for so long without any response from me.

That said, a lot of readers made really great comments, both about how we go about being culturally respectful/sensitive but also thinking through issues such as public representation, and that the Orthodox Jewish community is quite diverse and that this newspaper, and the policies it espouses, shouldn’t be taken as indicative of the behavior or attitudes of Orthodox Jews more broadly.

History and women’s studies professor Keri Manning, along with Aydrea at The Oreo Experience, Sully R., and Dmitriy T.M., sent a link to a series of illustrations of pin-up girls (from the ’50s, I’m estimating) alongside the original photograph on which they were modeled (Buzzfeed).  Today we bemoan photoshopping, and here we have pre-photoshop examples of the kind of free-reign that artists had in idealizing their subject.  Dr. Manning notes, for example, that overall:

Bellies become flatter. Breasts become perkier.  Cleavage appears that wasn’t there before.  Waistlines shrink; the difference between the bustline and waistline gets more pronounced.  Hair gets longer.  Hair goes from brunette to blonde.  Inner thighs emerge from the shadows.  Cheeks become flushed, lips are quite red.

An interesting look at a photoshop forerunner. See the images at Buzzfeed and Pristina.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

In the latest re-touching leak, before and after shots of Katy Perry’s Rolling Stone cover were counterposed at Elephant this month and sent in by Dmitriy T.M.   It’s a nice reminder that even incredibly beautiful, thin women — women who, for all intents and purposes, already conform to contemporary standards of beauty — are also being photoshopped to conform even more closely to an impossible ideal. Notice the slimming of her thigh, plumping of her breasts, smoothing of her skin, and re-making of her right hand.

Our re-touching tagis full of good stuff.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

This one-minute video exposes how one person is made to look his worst and his best for a sequential photo shoot. He is both a “before” and an “after” version of himself on a single day. It is as you have always suspected:

Borrowed from Body Impolitic.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.