Case Study of Faith Hill

This image I found quite shocking as they have retouched Faith Hill for the cover of Redbook magziene; July 2007 issue Published buy Hearst Magazines. So much she appears to have lost 20 years. The sad fact of the matter is she looks amazing for a lady of 40 as it is, but instead of celebrating this, they have decided to make her look like every other picture you see these days. Retouched to the point of looking facially like a sims character with no unique face characteristics e.g. smile lines and an unrealistic figure which has had all minor imperfections removed so it no longer resembles the person but a work of art.

It is hard to see all the differences when the image is moving so here is it side by side

I found this image on the website www.tinyurl.com/292q5e. This was a really good site as the article posted on July 16th 2007 goes on to discuss in detail everysingle thing that has been retouched in Faith Hills picture. There have been 11 significant changes.

I cannot understand where the obsession for a pefectly clipped, unrealistic image comes from. It seems to have started with taking out obvious imperfections often ocuring when taking a photo; red eyes, reflections, shadows etc. Since then retouching has failed to see the line more often than not making sure no image is published that does not have perfect skin with absolutely no imperfections, no lines, no uneven skintone, no strand of hair out of place. And it dosen't stop there; no inch of flesh can be out of place, big waists are made smaller, legs and arms thinner and longer and so on and so on. Untill the person is completely different yet the image considered "perfect". When did the humen body become impefect?

The media is constantly sending out "pefected" images with nothing to indicate to the untrained eye that they have been retouched. Individuals are looking at these images and thinking that is how they are suposed to look, that is beautiful and glamorous; it must be it's on the cover of a magazeine? And they are dieting and having plastic surgery etc in order to look more like these fake, over perfected images. I believe there is a connection between self-esteem issues, eating disorders such as anorexia and buliema and the reprentation of excessively retouched images.

Yes audience theory such as the epidermic needle theory can be used to challenge my above statement, but there is very little awareness that these images aren't real, and therefore they are being viewed passively. Only a small percentage of people are looking at perfected images and thinking "what a good piece of retouching". A horrifying number of young women in partcular take them to be an indication of how they should look, and this is leading to problems. What is so wrong with seeing an untouched image?

Kiera Knightly Case Study

Another very contraversial image is this one of Kiera Knightly;

This is a picture taken for a poster to promote the film King Arthur, 2004. There has been obvious reconstruction of the background, lightling and general colour enhansements to glamourise the film. But Keira's figure has been tampered with too. Her stomach and posture look altered and the biggest yet somehow most subtle difference is the dramaticaly enhansed bust of Keira, which i have found, people tend not to notice straight away. This is another image I have found when searching on the internet via google, and is taken from the website www.tinyurl.com/684vkm. What is interesting about this image, according to the article by Catherine Price, July 28th 2008, where I found this image is that the image on the left is the poster image used in Britain, and the image on the right is how the Americans adapted and used the image to promote the film in America.

I find this significant, as obviously each culture has different Media influences, America is notorious for size zero and much more competetive and stylised industry. I think their alterations to Kiera Knightly's picture shows the body image ideals America has, and how they use retouching to manipulate and create the "perfect" look. I wonder why Britain was content with showing Kiera for how she really is, but America was not. I think this shows that excessive retouching of the body is not neccesary and very misleading. Kiera, like Kate Winslet was not consulted, and since this incident has expressed that she does not want it to happen again. I think this is an import fact as it shows the only people who feel retouching body size and shape is necessary are the art directors, not the audience or the celebrities themselves.

Case Study of Kate Winslet

I began researching on the internet for examples of what can be acheived by retouching and was surprised by what I found. From widely criticsed images of celebs who's bodies have been nipped and tucked by the magic mouse to examples of retouching from a retouchers online portfolio which concentrates more on skin corrections and subtle body shape/porportion perfections. Here is my first example, a famous image of Kate Winslet when she posed for the front cover of GQ.

I have uploaded this image from http://www.ceitinn.com/pages/images/Kate.jpg but I origonally found it on www.tinyurl.com/62k629, on an online article from The Telegraph By Sarah Womack, Social Affairs Correspondent Last Updated: 4:25PM BST 19 Apr 2008. The issue of GQ the image was used in the Feburary 2003 issue, Conde Nast Publications.

http://www.rickmcginnis.com/movieblog/winslet.jpg, is where I uploaded this image from. You can see clearly from this comparison how they have used retouching to thin down her legs and waist, let alone all the standard facial perfections. I heard about this at the time of publishing, as there was much media coverage of the contreversy the adjustments were done as they were without Kate Winslets consent. It is also mentioned in Alesha Dixon's documentary, so I decided to research it further.

The Telegraph article was full of relevant ctrisicm and discussion of my topic, using this image as an example. A quote from the journal's editor Dylan Jones, said the photographs had been "highly styled, buffed, trimmed and altered... to make the subject look as good as humanly possible." The article goes on to innclude "Digitally-enhanced photographs of models are leaving young girls chasing the illusion of a flawless appearance, the British Fashion Council said as it urged magazine editors and advertisers to consider restricting their use...[after] an independent inquiry into the health of London catwalk models called for a voluntary code to regulate the use of digital manipulation."

This is an issue I hope to come on to later as I have found alot of discussion about regulating what is retouched and how much. The article goes on "The British Fashion Council, which owns and organises London Fashion Week, said it was writing to the British Society of Magazine Editors, the Periodical Publishers Association and the Advertising Association about the issue."Criticism of digitally-enhanced body images and the part it plays in magazines in perpetuating an unachievable aesthetic was raised during the independent inquiry," the BFC said."

the article inlcudes research from "The Women's Forum in Australia [who] published a report recently - Faking It: The Female Image in Young Women's Magazines - which said thin, sexualised and digitally-enhanced images of women were linked with women's experiences of poor body image, depression and anxiety and eating disorders. " This is something I hope to find and read for myself as it it includes who this issue is affecting and to what extent which wil be vital reearch for my project.

Where To Begin?

I decided to research this topic after seeing the documentary "look but don't touch" by Alesha Dixon when it was first aired on BBC3 on 7th July 2008 (a clip is shown below)

I think the main reason I wanted to research further into this topic is that I was quite blissfully unaware untill I saw this documentary of how much retouching could be done and the scale that it is used. I had heard odd things about photoshopping people's heads onto diffeent bodies and making you look thinnner with perfect skin etc. But I had no idea this was standard industry procedure and that every picture in a glossy magazine will have had some amount of retouching done to it. And that there is no way of knowing how much? Was it just a skin correction or a breast inlargement?

A natural part of flicking through a magazine for me is looking at the modles and thinking "wow she's got lovely skin" or "what a perfect figure" but what I didn't realsie is that I was aspiring towards fake, unreal, and digitally perfected images. Images that promote nothing more than an unatainable represention of beauty, only acheivable with a computer. I think the Media has a huge influence on teenagers, girls in particular and I feel they should take a greater responsibility in the self-esteem issues that they create. Such a focus on unatainable beauty is definitely a body image issue for young women and men, which is why I feel awareess on the subject is really important as we cannot prevent the industry from retouching altogether.

Further clips from the Documentary;

www.tinyurl.com/7pgor5

www.tinyurl.com/7y9wwn

I'm pretty sure that I was not alone in my niaviety. This is why I am so interested to find out why retouching is used in the industry, how much awareness there is and who this can affect?

The BBC synopsis of this programme is; Documentary in which singer Alesha Dixon, concerned about the increasing pressure on women to conform to an ideal body type, investigates the practice of airbrushing and retouching that has become a staple of magazine photos. Keen to discover whether these images simply celebrate the female form or whether they make harmful, unrealistic demands on women and society, her journey sees her sitting in on 18-year-old Ellie's boob job, hearing fashion mag insider Liz Jones and celeb mate Cheryl Cole complain about the beauty industry and appearing on a front cover with her own body beautiful untouched.

Credits:
Key talent ......................................................................Alesha Dixon

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00cty56

My CRS

As part of my Media Studies A-level course I must carry out a Critical Research Study. I have decided to research retouching in the Media, more specifically-

"How can ARTifical digital manipulation in Advertising reinforce the notion of unattainable beauty?".

Thus I's aiming to fing out...

- Why is retouching used within the industy?

- How much retouching is used?

- Are people aware that retouching is used within the industry?

- Are people aware of how much can be acheived through retouching? As often the finished product looks nothing like the inital image!

-Who does this affect if anyone?

-Is there a line to how much retouching can be done?

-Should it be enforced that an image that has been retouched must clearly state that retouching has occured in order to raise awareness?

(Most of the above questions will include some primary research such as; Focus groups, Questionnaires, and Interviews with professionals who work within the industry)

-Further research into the idea of unatainabe beauty being sold to an unsuspecting audience.

-Research theory into retouching and adverts including how we associate identity with the Media such as The Effects Theory, Uses and Gratifications and some Feminist Theory.

I began researching this topic in July but it has taken me a while to decide on this specific question and area of the Media to investigate. I am also only now setting up a blog as I am struggling to review effectively all the information I have collected since July and would recomend anyone else doing a similar project uses a blog to store their information and thoughts on their project. As it is much clearer and more interesting than rifling through hundres of word docs or paper print outs!