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/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?
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
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