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.