Photo Retouching - The Shocking Extremes Take By the Beauty Industry To Create Perfection

Photo retouching has long been the fashion industry’s dirty little secret.  The ability to digitally retouch photos is certainly not a new technique used by the fashion and beauty industry but just how much has this art of digital manipulation changed the way we view true beauty?  Magazines have come under fire for the extreme measures they take to digitally ‘perfect’ people.  All of these false images that we are bombarded with every time we turn on a television or open a magazine are certainly contributing to the unrealistic body ideals and negative body image of both women and men all over the world.

Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty recently featured a video clip showing the retouching process done to a model from start to finish.  Dove, whose recent advertising campaigns focus on beauty coming in all shapes, sizes and ages, call out the drastic measures some companies take to create the perfect picture.  It is quite shocking to see how the finished product looks so completely different from the starting shot.  How could seeing all these artificially altered images be good for anyone’s perception of their own body?

 

An even more shocking video posted on the blog Back in Skinny Jeans highlighting the extremes of photo retouching as at least 100 pounds are digitally taken off a model during the retouching process.  Watching this will opening your eyes to the way technology can be used to give any model the ‘digital diet’ treatment and leave you wondering just how ethical it is to practice these extreme retouching techniques.

What do you think?  Are critics right when they say photo retouching has gone too far and is dramatically harming American’s body image?

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