Photoshop Beauties

Just recently, many celebrities have been caught in photoshop scandals. Many fans and viewers reported celebrities photoshopping their pictures in order to appear thinner, and to manipulate their bust and buttocks to look larger than they are. The photoshop issue has been an ethical problem as discussed in this New York Times article. The article discusses how the same celebrity on a cover of a magazine would appear drastically different on another magazine. It creates a negative body image for women because no one can achieve the looks that are shown in magazines and the media. This article was written in 2009, but this instagram photoshop scandal is recent to 2015. Some celebrities today are manipulating their own pictures because I believe that they are upheld to this high standard of beauty. For example, Kim Kardashian has been accused of photoshopping her derrière because she is famously known for that body part. Beyoncé was caught photoshopping a thigh gap on one of her instagram post. Target has been on the backlash when it was caught photoshopping a thigh gap on one of their models in a swimsuit catalogue. Almost all magazine or advertisement pictures use photoshop, but when do we say, “that’s too much?” Is it when we can detect the obvious photoshop mistakes or that a picture looks almost too unrealistic? We must draw a line somewhere, and we cannot only punish or call out “bad” photoshopping. Or should we eliminate photo retouching completely? Aerie lately launched a campaign in which it did not use any retouching software on their models. Would this type of campaign change the way we view beauty in the U.S? I think so. Photoshopping may be needed to sell products to viewers, but the cost of doing so is too great. The perception of beauty that the media displays cannot be attained and it is affecting the people’s, especially young women, self-esteem and self perception for a long duration time that is unintentional.

Written by: M. Hoang