"Society promotes unrealistic standards of beauty." (using photoshop, of corse)

[JonA_CT]

I agree with everything that's being said...although does anyone else think that the clarity slider got dragged to 100 for a few of those before pictures? Especially the Lindsay Lohan one.

 

[JustJazzie]

...I just don't understand how we can blame the idea of what we perceive as beautiful on a program, or on a specific artistic medium. When clearly, it is completely and simply, a means to an end that would be met one way or another.

Because it's easy. You don't have to know anything about photography, advertising, marketing or the fashion/beauty industry. You just have to know the name of one tool and say its name with authority when blaming an entire industry for a current fashion trend. This is the same as blaming Leonardo's pallet knife for the quality of the Mona Lisa's skin. True, it may be the tool that caused the rendering, but it didn't do it autonomously.

I love posts that stay firmly on topic. ;-)

Surely it was the oil paint's fault!! We should all just stop using oil paint, because its a completely unrealistic medium!

But is it so wrong if someone WANTS to be rendered in an oil painting? Is it so wrong if someone enjoys the way a portrait looks with a little oil paint on the top?
I mean, sometimes its NICE to put on your best dress and a pair of rose colored glasses.

 

[Desert Rose]

PHOTOGRAPHY has for many years been considered to have a basis in reality, in actuality, in the real,actual world that was in front of the lens for a split-second in time. For the first 150 or so years of its existence, photography was considered to be, for the most part, "reality", or "truth". An actual, real, based-on-a-physical-reality type of thing. Photographs were accepted as evidence in hundreds of thousands of court cases. Crime scenes documented by photographers, using cameras. The photographs they made were accepted as 'evidence' in courts of law.

They still are, a forensic photographers images are kept in a guarded environment to maintain their purity and authenticity and are still used in courtrooms as admissible evidence.

 

[tirediron]

...I mean, sometimes its NICE to put on your best dress and a pair of rose colored glasses.

Well... I'm more of a skirt & blouse person, but...



Absolutely. I'm not the Motor Vehicle Department; my job is to make people look good the way they want to look good. On occasion I've rolled my eyes a bit at some of the things clients have asked for, but at the end of the day, the goal is produce work that the person being captured is happy with.

Something else to bear in mind is that the camera sees EVERY "flaw" in a persons skin. Just last week I did a headshot session for the board of directiors of a local women's charity. There was a pretty good cross-section of looks; ages from probably early 40s to mid/late 50s, heights from about 5'4" to 5'11" and figures from very slender to very well insulated, but nothing that would cause you to take a second look at any of them.

There were at least three, whose images once I had them in LR I said to myself, "WHAT? They didn't look like that!", but... in fact, yes, they did. They had that blotchy skin, they had those odd wrinkles, etc I didn't notice any of those things during the session, but they were there. I think at a minimum, my processing should make them look the way my mind saw them....

 

[Derrel]

Speaking of society promoting unrealistic standards of beauty...I JUST happened to see this article on the web a couple of minutes ago: Disturbing rise of the child women: We've seen it on Alexa and Amal - the waif-like 'young girl' look only a VIP can achieve. But what is the price to their health - and their copycat fans? | Daily Mail Online

 

[KmH]

I remember hashing over the implications of "Society promotes unrealistic standards of beauty." back in 1980.
Of course back then we were editing photographs in a wet darkroom.

The first commercially available version of Photoshop didn't even begin shipping until 1989 and wasn't widely used in the industry until the early 2000's when Digital camera sales finally started taking off.

 

[vigilante]

I have no problem with it. A glamor photo is meant to be "perfect" as possible, that's the point of glamor.

The problem is with the equation of edited photos with "standard of beauty". It only creates a "standard of beauty" for people who are completely indulgent in it and lose track of reality.
Glamor photos create a false standard of beauty.
Porn creates a false standard of sex.
Super heroes create a false standard of strength and ability.
Fitness pros create a false standard of fitness.
Athletes create a false standard of physicality.

All of these things and many more are purposefully "over the average". They are the best rendition we have of reality, even if it's not the experience of 99.99% of people. That is why it's entertainment, because it's beyond reality for most people and we enjoy seeing the exceptional.

So when it comes to glamor images, why is this a "standard of beauty"? Who said it is? Who is telling anybody that it is? If young girls are being raised on these magazines and photos and actually thinking they need to look like Photoshopped versions of themselves, then it's more the fault of the parents I would think. It's like "here daughter, here is a magazine full of photos of what REAL girls are supposed to look like, enjoy!"

As a society who craves entertainment, we will always generate things to titillate the senses. If these pieces of entertainment are supposedly "becoming" a "standard" for average people, whose fault is that? Is it the fault of the creator? They don't tell people "hey, this is what totally average people do, what average people look like." They know they are producing entertainment.

So the fault must be with the consumers. They watch this entertainment, enjoy it, pay for it and thus stimulate it to continue, then turn around and think the real world should look the same? This is so childish, so naive. I have a hard time believing adults can be so juvenile to take their entertainment and actually think it must apply to the real world too, and hold each other up to these "standards".

So maybe the fault is with parents, who let their actual children consume this entertainment, without considering that their young minds might not be as able to differentiate between what is the real world and what is created for entertainment. Then these same kids grow up, always trying to "reach" for the "standards" they always thought were "out there" in the "real world" because their immature thinking was never properly directed by their parents. Now there are Youtube channels where little 14 year old girls do makeup tutorials to copy glamor photos of their favorite stars. Are there any parents in the background telling these kids they don't actually NEED to copy the makeup in glamor photos in magazines, and most people do not wear 100% cover makeup, or need to for any reason?

I looked through that slideshow, I'm fine with most of the fixes. Bad photos, lighting, glare, greasy skin. Sure, fix all that, add some fake makeup, fill in the hair, smooth the skin a little. That's why it's meant for, to be entertainment. The real fault is with whoever it is that allowed the consumer to grow up thinking that this entertainment was actually a picture of what the real world is supposed to be, and that we have to live up to it.

 

[robbins.photo]

How many antique nude paintings included celluite to its full degree ?
Do we really believe that whatever imperfections were included or excluded in the final piece were not at the artists discretion?

My guess would be all of them, in fact they probably added more than what was actually there. Skinny women were not "vogue" back then.

Obviously, the medium has changed. And our idea of beauty has evolved. How far do you think they took these modifications in classic art? Do you feel it should have any bearing on how we view ethics in our artistic leeway?

To me this one is not a question of ethics, at all. When I have taken pictures of people they for the most part don't want me to leave in blemishs, etc - they want them edited out. I don't do this professionally but if I did, well if that's what the client wants that what the client gets. To me there is no ethical or moral dilemma there.

This links to a painting of Queen Elizabeth I of England.
The portrait, according to my research was taken when she was in her late 60's. Yet she is portrayed youthful, and "iconic."

She could be a vampire. Just saying...

I guess what I am really wondering is "why are photographic artists being held to a "higher moral standard" so to speak, when compared to artists of other mediums?"

Because some people are whiny buttnuggets? Well that's my working theory at the moment at any rate...

 

[chuasam]

as a retoucher I say: you tell me how you want to look and let's see if we can do it.