Some of may or may or may not have seen Jezebel’s post comparing unphottoshopped and photoshopped tabloid photos of Megan Fox on the red carpet. If not, they are here.
She has pores!
And fly away hairs!
And looks semi-human!
Almost like us demi-humans that consume these magazines and buy into this manufactured beauty ideal.
and for further consideration: Jennifer Aniston looking like an actual forty year old woman!
Madonna looking like…well, however old Madonna is!
And destroying every single last one of Julienne Moore’s freckles!
As the first link to Jennifer Aniston reminds us, it IS important to look at these photos. This has nothing to do with body snark or “so and so” is actually so ugly, old, nasty, wrinkly, gross etc. IT IS WHAT THESE PEOPLE LOOK LIKE. IN REAL LIFE. Magazines, tabloids and celebrity have become the authority on beauty norms, and airbrushed/photoshopped photos are now the icons of these norms. We can’t have pores or fly away hairs, we can’t look like actual pieces of human flesh but instead must be sculptures with perfect clothes.
As someone who frequently reads Details magazine whenever I want to feel really crummy about my body image, I find it really hard to totally buy into the “they are so photoshopped” argument because, for some reason, it makes so much more sense that I’m just ugly. And these ads selling clothes are the arbiters of natural beauty.
But look! They are people, with flaws. and I think this is really central to discover when shifting ideas of body/beauty norms in our culture, because if we were to strictly go by popular culture, none of it has any true physical essence. It’s all lights, magic and unpaid interns with computers.
ShoutOut! James Madison University 