In defense of the photoshopped

I'm currently in a media and society class. This week we talked about photoshopping pictures. One of the topics of discussions was, "Is photoshopping racist?" This kind of really annoyed me. The examples used were two pictures of OJ Simpson, one on Newsweek and one on Time Magazine, and two pictures of Gabourey Sidibe, one on Elle and one from google images. The picture of OJ Simpson was his mugshot. On Time, the photo was altered to cast a shadow over his face, removing most of the highlights. It also blurred out the edges of everything and darkened the background. Apparently people thought this was racist because Time was trying to make Simpson look more dangerous by making him darker. The opposite was true for the photos of Sidibe. The picture on Elle was considerably lighter than her actual skin color. This, apparently, was racist because it's saying you have to be white to be beautiful.

I'm going to start with my problem with the OJ Simpson pictures. First off, Simpson's mugshot was very red. On the Newsweek cover, it completely washed out the title and headlines, which were also red. Time, which is NOT a breaking news magazine, would be more concerned with the lay out of its cover. Secondly, casting a figure in a shadow is not racist. It is mysterious. Time probably wanted to have a more suspenseful cover. I ask you, if a white man had been cast in shadow, whould that also be racist? No, it would not. So why is a black man cast in shadow racist? Darker skin was not the intent of this photo. The intent was the shadow. A shadow that would have the same effect on a white or black person.

My main issue with picking on photoshopping pictures is actually with Gabourey Sidibe's photo on Elle. In my class, a lot of people were saying the lightening of her skin was saying you can't be beautiful with very dark skin. I completely disagree. Elle is a fashion and beauty magazine. You will never see an extremely dark-skinned person shown with her actual skin tone on the cover of a magazine like that. It's not because dark skin isn't beautiful. It is. However, extremely dark skin hides necessary lines in faces when being photographed. Look at this from the editor of a beauty magazine's point of view. (Note: I am not an editor of a beauty magazine. I just happen to know about design and art. Plus I'm very interested in fashion and beauty so I pay attention to these things.) Sidibe has beautiful eye brows. Women might want to shape their eyebrows like her. How can they if they cannot see her eyebrows in the magazine? Sidibe's face is very nicely shaped, with the shape of her check bones, nose, lips, and chin filling out that shape in a very beautiful and charming way. If her photo had been left untouched, the darkness of her skin would have flattened her face out. Did her skin have to be lightened as much as it was? Probably not. Did it have to be lightened in order to show off the natural beauty that is in the shape of her face? Yes. Real life and photographs are different. Untouched photographs of almost anyone are not going to sell magazines simply because things that naturally occur when mixing skin and cameras will flatten faces, make faces look oily, create a skin tone that is not accurate, etc.

The camera also adds ten pounds. I'm not joking. You can look super skinny in real life one day, but a picture of you will look averagely skinny. Can you blame editors of photos for taking cellulite out of pictures? Is there an easier way to shed those ten pounds? This photoshopping can go overboard very easily in feature articles. However, in advertisements, I don't think this does go overboard. Advertisements are meant to sell a product, not a person. If the height of the model's shoulders will distract from the product, then it is perfectly ok to move them. Some people just have weird proportions. In an advertisement, anything that is proportionatly off will detract from the product. Model's are photoshopped into a "perfect" person in order to detract as little as possible from the product.

This is often criticized as making the standard of beauty unreasonable. While I can see the reasoning behind this argument, I disagree. I will bet you anything that young girls compared themselves to eachother before the camera was even invented. Girls and women have always compared themselves. There has always been someone prettier, someone you could never hope to even compare to in beauty. All photoshopping in magazines has made following celebrities even more seperated that it already was.

Now, I am not a parent, so I am taking a guess here, but I think self image is rooted in the home. While the teenaged years are rough, I believe the poor body image common in these years can be grown out of based what was taught in the home. Parents have more affect on their children than it seems like anyone cares to admit. If the parents of a young woman don't tell her how pretty she is, how her eyes sparkle when she smiles, then that young woman will never believe it when she's a woman and a man is telling it to her. If parents don't teach young girls not to compare themselves to other girls because everyone has their own qualities that make them beautiful, that girl will never stop comparing herself to others even after she is a grown woman.

I'm begging you, consume media responisbly. There will always be something to take offense at if you don't. Understand the type of media you are consuming. Understand the messages the magazines you subscribe to are trying to send. Before you accuse a magazine of being racist or setting a bad example for the yound and impressionable, think of what that magazine is trying to do. Society can't be blamed for all of the problems in the world.