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"Redbook" caught red-handed retouching Faith HillMagazines have doctored cover images since the first model showed up for her first photo shoot hung over after her first coke-and-booze-fueled night out on the first town. It happens to some degree on every cover of every issue of every magazine. So, not surprisingly, it has happened again. But I’m not talking about Katharine McPhee in Stuff, Kate Winslet in GQ or even Andy Roddick in Men’s Fitness. This time, the retouching culprit isn’t a usual-suspect men’s magazine at all — it’s women’s mag staple Redbook. The blog Jezebel sponsored a $10,000 contest to find the most egregious example of airbrushing, then it blew up the spot on the mom mag for Photoshopping the crap out of Faith Hill on the cover of its July issue. Here's the real Faith:
And here's the Photoshopped Faith:
A quick comparison reveals the obvious touch-ups that magazines regularly engage in — and the ones Faith Hill and her publicist likely appreciate: Her crow’s feet are smoothed; her laugh lines are softened. But Jezebel proceeds to take us on a feature-by-feature tour of exactly what was inserted (hair), removed (ass and elbow) and erased (back fat) so that the true image of the hideous Hill wouldn’t scald readers’ eyes.
Some of my personal favorite alterations are the complete removal of the bend in her elbow (fat elbows are a scourge!), the elimination of her armpit skin to reveal her spaghetti strap, the wholesale addition of her right arm and the junking of her junk in the trunk. To say that magazines contribute to an unattainable ideal is to undersell the point: The art directors and retouchers of the world get paid to create women who literally do not exist and never could. It’s worse than the old Women’s Studies 101 complaints about Barbie’s proportions; everyone already knows Barbie isn’t real. The more insidious — and therefore more dangerous — manipulation occurs when they take away the natural crook of a woman’s arm or tighten up her droopy earlobe. Really: They digitally adjusted her earlobe! If a magazine reader wonders why, even though she’s constantly dieting, buying expensive clothing and applying layers of makeup, she never look likes Faith Hill, it’s because not even Faith Hill looks like Faith Hill. The reader can never attain that look because truly no human being ever could. And Kate Winslet will never look like this:
I suspect working in the industry is the only way to know the frightening extent to which, in magazines, nothing is real. The pictures of cover subjects, be they models, actors or musicians, are no more real than a cartoon drawing — and that’s exactly what they are: drawings. The art director takes a print from the shoot, grabs a pen, and marks where he wants a woman to begin and end. He draws how thick her legs should be. He circles for removal parts of her arms, thighs, hips, waist, face and butt. He indicates how far her legs and hair should extend beyond where nature has grown them. He draws on muscles; he erases nipples; he adds shoes; the variations are endless. The final product resembles reality, but it isn’t. It's reality squared, or halved, or otherwise sliced and diced in defiance of physics and disrespect of the photo's audience as well as its subject. The most offensive part of this latest cover cleanup, to me, is that the perpetrator is Redbook, a service magazine for older women. (At least the men’s magazines usually cop to hotting up their cover models.) And to add verbal insult to visual injury, the cover line next to Faith Hill’s head screams, “The New Skinny Pills: Yes, They Work!” To my knowledge, science has not yet yielded a pill that can create a 1-inch elbow.
The Redbook peeps, for their part, maintain that "The retouching we did on Faith Hill's photo for the July cover is completely in line with industry standards.” So that makes it OK? Not to the Jezebels, whose entire existence is based on the premise that women’s media perpetuates what it terms “big lies,” one of which is the cover lie. To this end, the site’s writers regularly and snarkily pick apart the ridiculously altered pictures, simplistic articles and unrealistic expectations that fill the pages of consumer magazines. So I’ll leave the last, awesome word to them:
Submitted by on July 19, 2007 - 12:16pm. |
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News, Reviews & Commentary on Lesbian and Bisexual women in Entertainment and the Media
Great analysis. Thanks for
Great analysis. Thanks for posting such an enlightening post. (Also, hats off to the Jezebel blog for being so thorough!)
I've been thinking about how all of this reality, representation, and ideology stuff works so cyclically: We don't see women who look their age, so, when we do, we think they are not really women (worse, that they are doing something unwomanly). i know when viewers see a woman with wrinkles on screen they have immediate contempt for her. To look real, for a woman, means submitting to all sorts of technologies and, even then, you'd never be good enough. Pretty sick.
Disturbing
Thank you for the story
I'm 23 years old and in a wheelchair I have a disoder the affects my nerveous sytem thus my entire body .I have many scars, lack of muscel controll and I don't hava a skinney body. to top it all off I like things natural. no make-up, I don't style my very short hair, bras are hard to get into so I don't wear one. I suppose If you want to label me I'm butch not exactly an image seen often in the media. Thank you for writing this story and telling others those images do not exist.
Something isnt right...
Somehow coke-booze filled night resulting in hangover just doesnt seem her style. She's always been so Peachy keen and Squeaky clean. I dont buy it.
um, try reading carefully
I'm in shock!
lesbian without borders
Her arm um..
agreed
Great topic and article! I
Great topic and article!
I don’t think there is anything wrong with doctoring up magazine covers or photo layouts. I just think there should be a required disclaimer at the bottom of each and every one: “People in this photo appear more beautiful than they actually are.”
And then maybe pin up the side-by-side picture comparison of Faith in every grammar school and high school gym locker room (boys and girls). With a caption in big letters: Get Real! Put it right next to the CPR instructions there on the wall. I don’t know just a thought.
In the meantime, I need to purchase me some Photoshop….
The real Faith looks hot
... and real, so I don't see the need to Photoshop her. The result now is that she looks fake, plastic-y, and I agree her arm looks frightingly long. (I know we're supposed to be related to certain apes, but this is ridiculous!)
_ _ _ _ _
"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind." (Dr. Seuss)
She looks perfectly fine to
She looks perfectly fine to me in the regular picture... but abnormally skinny in the mag cover. I prefer her for really her. Thats why I hate lots of mags.
I don't want to doubt you
Know everything about you
I don't want to sit
Across the table from you
Wishing I could run.....
-Cake, and what I live my life by.
Dangerous Illusions
Great article on a subject that just can't be given enough emphasis. The whole notion of flawlessness and perfection that people, particularly women, are expected to achieve and perpetuate is an industry-created airbrushed, photoshoped illusion. Often a dangerous and unrealistic one at that. Especially when you stop to consider that there are many people who do not realize that this type of thing occurs on a regular basis.
It used to be that photo retouching was much more limited and mostly a cosmetic tweak of last resort. Now they use it far too often and extensively and are actually crossing well over the line from touching up flaws to actually recreating and reconstructing for the sake of creating visual perfection. Personally, I think it is a by-product of the whole tabloidization of news and it goes hand-in-hand with the overall increase in the lack of trust from viewers where the media is concerned.
Years ago, I used to regularly attend the rehearsal performances for the CMA Awards. Very often, the artists will come in casual dress and some without even make-up because press access is limited. While some artists looked exactly the same -- even sans make-up -- others were almost unrecognizable. Faith Hill fell strongly into the latter category, I suspect mostly because she's featured in publications that are guilty of this type of retouching that conforms to industry standards.
It used to be that photo
It used to be that photo retouching was much more limited and mostly a cosmetic tweak of last resort.
Slight quibble: not really a last resort in my experience, which started nearly 20 years ago (and finished 10 years ago). I worked for a place which did pre-press for a lot of mid-range magazines, and all images were altered in some way. The larger pictures (over half-page) of people were especially tweaked to get rid of wrinkles, blemishes and freckles, to get rid of bulges in the wrong places, and to enhance things like cheekbones and so on.
I would agree that it's getting worse across the range, though. Things like eye/face shape and such egregious "slimming" modifications were only used on rare occasions in the very glossiest of magazines.
Good article
What's wrong with showing real women?
I think Faith Hill looks pretty in her real photo. Come on! Retouching just makes everyone look the same and fake.
"Life is either a daring adventure or nothing."-Helen Keller
Awe. Some. "There is no
Awe. Some.
"There is no formula. You learn to love by loving. "
Aldous Huxley
enhancement
I'm a little surprised about the fuss
Well, ok, one of the reasons I am no longer in the industry - I was a photolithographer 12 years ago - is the fact it's just lies.
Every picture you see in a magazine is retouched. Every single one, even in the most basic Women's Day kind of magazine. The Faith Hill picture is only remarkable by just how obvious the changes were - it was a fairly poor job, IMO.
I actually don't support totally raw pictures being used - candid photography is generally very harsh on people's looks. You can see examples of those sorts of pictures being used when magazines go on about how "unkempt", "fat", "unhealthy" or "drugged/drunk" someone is - they use the worst possible shots, and don't tweak them at all (except for lighting/colour).
What I feel very strongly about is that such image manipulations should be used for lighting/colour correction only, and to slightly soften the harsh areas - as I say, a large-format static picture of someone is very unforgiving. But telling lies via images is something that gives everyone totally unreasonable expectations of what makes an attractive person.
A man's perspective