Comments on: Retouch

By: Rage on Omnipotent » Blog Archive » Retouching

Rage on Omnipotent » Blog Archive » Retouching — Thu, 05 Jan 2006 14:54:27 +0000

[...] Interesting Flash animation showing how skillful designers are in an expose of taking a photo from good to covergirl good. SFW. There are further examples linked from the blog I read this on. [...]

By: Dissident

Dissident — Sun, 25 Dec 2005 07:38:50 +0000

#19: Yes, or rather, the lower part of the body looks disproportionately small, because she was given a more adult body shape (larger hip/waist ratio) by reducing the waist only. That should have been followed up by enlarging the whole thing a bit. The way she is now, if I met her on the street I’d probably think “transvestite?”.

#20: But the example is really, really bad (i.e. artificial) since most of the modifications would not have been needed had they simply used a model of the right age. The result is not all that sensational either. Given half an hour to walk around campus, Clifford could probably take snapshots of 5-10 better looking women with that ubiquitous camera of his.

By: Suz

Suz — Sat, 24 Dec 2005 19:46:37 +0000

Ok, I commented prematurely. I understand the point is to show how an image is retouched so girls realize the images they see on magazine covers aren’t real.

By: Suz

Suz — Sat, 24 Dec 2005 19:33:47 +0000

1. Isn’t her head too big for her body? (i.e. the Photoshop job is kind of obvious)
2. I just don’t get it. How does this draw attention to the issue or help girls with their images?

By: Dissident

Dissident — Fri, 23 Dec 2005 14:13:47 +0000

Here’s an observation about that image which even Sean may have a hard time disagreeing with: because of the way it’s constructed, finding it more attractive than the original is actually quite healthy. Why? Because the original turns out to be not a woman, but a 14 year old child. The modifications which have the largest impact on my perception at least – making the nose thinner, removing frontal shadows, adding a lateral one to make the cheekbone more pronounced, making the jawline more defined, removing acne typical of the early teens, pumping up the breasts – all amount to turning that child into a young woman in her late teens to early twenties.

Now, I don’t know about Swedish feminists, but normal men do indeed find young women more attractive than children. Should we really be sorry?

Corollary: if that cover had actually been a commercial production, a competent photographer would have selected a woman rather than a child model, and saved most of the retouching work demonstrated in the download. Never trust state propaganda.

By: citrine

citrine — Fri, 23 Dec 2005 03:36:04 +0000

This is a rather unusual posting, but on the topic of the media (and society in general) overwhelming validating only one “model” of femininity, I believe that the following book needs to get more publicity:

Carrie Pilby (Red Dress Ink (Numbered Paperback)) (Paperback)
by Caren Lissner

Now that Christmas is just around the corner and if you are still looking for a gift for a cerebral teenage girl, I suggest this book. (Disclaimer – I do not benefit in any way from the sales of this book. I really enjoyed reading it and have taken upon myself to give it more publicity.)

By: Pyracantha

Pyracantha — Thu, 22 Dec 2005 08:11:21 +0000

will they do this for women scientists too?

By: sisyphus

sisyphus — Thu, 22 Dec 2005 04:37:22 +0000

Classic example of Baudrillard’s hyperreality.

By: Jane

Jane — Thu, 22 Dec 2005 03:04:10 +0000

Sex sells and that is the way it is.

By: Maynard Handley

Maynard Handley — Thu, 22 Dec 2005 02:09:43 +0000

“Why do people find such touched-up pictures (even if they didn’t know they were retouched) attractive?”

Well duh. This is something as old as the hills. You make art that shows an especially attractive woman (or man) by stripping out the “masculine” aspects of the model and pumping up the female aspects, to get something that is essentially 150% female (or vice versa). This has been going on since at least the Chola bronzes of India (11th century CE) which not only do this with respect to the physical bodies of the sculptures, but also with respect to their posing, which is, once again, taking the difference between how female and male bodies can move and pushing it to beyond what is physically possible.

I’m not going to comment on the issue of whether or not worrying about magazine covers is a sensible use of swedish govt funds, but lets not
(a) pretend this is some new pathology of the 20th century
(b) pretend that the results are not successful. Yes the original model was cute, but I am happy to admit that I find the touched up model even more attractive. If you want to claim that I am evil for finding this type of art successful in its intentions, go ahead, but don’t expect me or most of the rest of the world to take you seriously.
Neither is it especially useful to move from this claim to some blanket statement about how “men hate their womenfolk bcs they don’t look as hot as magazine covers” without providing a whole lot of evidence for this claim.