Post production, something that has been used though out photography since the 1860s, however in the early years of retouching it was seen as an art as people would use bleach and different shades of ink to perfect the skin of models and make people look beautiful. Fast forward to today and photoshop and photo editing apps are widely available so people can change the slightest of things to turning them into a completely different person, so for todays lesson we put things to the test and tried out one of the most popular apps called Facetune and here are the results:
1st edit:
- smoothing the skin
- eyes brighter
- defined the eyes
- whiting of the eyes
- reshaped forehead
- highlighted face
- reshaped lips
- made lips more red
- added bronzer
2nd edit:
- defined eyes
- defined lips
- defined hair
- added blush
- added bronzer
- added highlight
- made lips for red
- smoothed skin
- defined eyes
- defined eyebrows
- added highlighter
- reshaped face
Here are some examples on shoots that have been heavily retouched, just by looking at these three examples the most common theme between them all is that they've photoshopped the model to appear smaller than what they originally are. There’s no doubt that we live in a culture that is crawling with images of perfect people – both men and women. Especially women: beautiful, sexualised women surround us everywhere in the modern world with a promise that we could be just as happy, just as sexy, if we could just be them. And there’s a backlash against these perfect images, as feminists and media critics pick apart the messages in the media. Teaching children and teenagers what goes into these images – what they are for which is selling stuff and what goes into them which is lots of work creating the perfect person who doesn’t exist in real life – is a very empowering process, and one that I think should be taught to everyone.
But there’s also a dark side, where women especially are assumed to “always” internalise these images. Feminism teaches us that we will inevitably internalise them, and tells us to feel victimised when we see them. This is a place where feminism stays securely in an old patriarchal place – that women cannot learn to see media images as objects outside ourselves – that we’re too helpless and feeble to see the difference. This teaching demeans our intelligence, and polarises women into a narcissistic tug-of-war where we are either expected to create and enjoy jealousy in others when we’re on the “right side” of this aesthetic, or where we’re supposed to feel that it’s extremely unfair that media images don’t mirror “us” in our real life state. And for teens, adults play into this. From Moms who think their kid is weird for not wanting breast enlargement surgery, to the political activists at change.org,(the press machine behind the teens protesting Seventeen), women and teen girls are still being urged to fight each other over their looks – whether they should do everything possible to attain various standards of beauty, or whether they should have a political view that denies beauty, and demand that public images of women mirror exactly who they are in real life. Media over saturation as it relates to body issues is a distinctly first-world problem, and only part of that problem. Body issues came alongside a general societal wealth that allows us a surplus of food, mirrors, scales in our homes, and ample time to obsess over our “problem areas”. If only Feminist Discourse 101 included these factors in its discussions, there would be a lot more leeway for women and teen girls to have a sane response to the pressures they’re under to be so narcissistic and politically polarised over their own looks.
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