Recently everyone seems to be going on about GIRLS creator
Lena Dunham’s recent Vogue cover and how controversial the photographs of her
are. Whilst retouching photographs is in no way a new phenomenon, people are
still making a fuss about it. Yes it doesn’t portray a completely realistic
image of a human being, yes it may feed body image issues and yes we know that
Lena doesn’t need photo shopping, but it happened, it happens and we just need
to get over it. Magazines are not supposed to show REAL people, if they did the
supermodel would become extinct faster than Cara can record herself on the
catwalk. Nobody really wants to open a magazine and see a picture of something
that is less than perfect, these magazines are simply giving us what we want,
and essentially what will sell. Photo shopping is just a result of this society
in which we live where we idolise individuals for various reasons but then we
wait, perched on the edge of our seats for them to do step out of line (cough
Miley cough) so we can rip them to shreds with our words. So why would a
magazine leave in certain imperfections in a photograph purely to receive tons
of negative feedback. Fashion magazines are currently in a lose-lose situation
in which they are damned for using retouching technology but then damned if they
don’t. Surely if people genuinely want photo retouching to end they should work
on changing the attitudes of society first ‘nip it in the bud’ is not a cliché
for no reason, if the rest of society, or even just the target market of
magazines such as Vogue make it clear that photo shopping is unacceptable to
them then it will eventually stop. At the end of the day it all comes down to
the bottom line and the consumer has the power to control that and so these
magazines have it in their best interests to please the consumer.
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