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Global beauty expectations via photoshop

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Global beauty expectations via photoshop

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This video not only shows the affects of photoshop on women but also a global view of beauty standards culturally.

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Women Get Photoshopped Into Cultural Beauty Standards • Ladylike

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This advertisement takes place in India, where the media has convinced women they need to alter their natural skin to be more beautiful.

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This advertisement takes place in North America, where women strive to be darker based on what the media tells them is beautiful. Underneath this advertisement was "feel beautiful in your tan skin"

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In this video, the women are photographed on what they currently look like, and then altered using photoshop to create an image on what they wished they looked like. Before revealing the "after" photo, the women stated that they were scared to see what they look like, because then they will start to feel bad about their body image. This is what the media does to women, they use body altering software to create an unrealistic version of models, and it makes women insecure and question why they don't look like the cover models.

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Women Get Photoshopped Into Their Ideal Body Types

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Do photoshopped images make you feel bad about your own looks?

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Do photoshopped images make you feel bad about your own looks?

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This website article asks students to post their opinions on how they believe photoshopping can make people about their own looks. It was interesting to see other student's opinions, I noticed that the majority of the postings that stated they don't mind photoshopping were male, and the opposing side that said photoshopping was wrong, were female. This is due to the way that women are portrayed in the media. The majority of the comments were opposed to photoshopping, stating that it can severely affect one's confidence, and can result in extreme measures such as eating disorders.

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Before you answer the question, take a look at the 10 before-and-after photos that illustrate this article.
How do you feel about this kind of altering of photos of models and celebrities? Do you agree with those who want to label retouched images like these because they may promote unrealistic expectations of appropriate body image and contribute to eating disorders? Why or why not?

In "Photoshopped or Not? A Tool to Tell," Steve Lohr writes:

The photographs of celebrities and models in fashion advertisements and magazines are routinely buffed with a helping of digital polish. The retouching can be slight - colors brightened, a stray hair put in place, a pimple healed. Or it can be drastic - shedding 10 or 20 pounds, adding a few inches in height and erasing all wrinkles and blemishes, done using Adobe's Photoshop software, the photo retoucher's magic wand.

"Fix one thing, then another and pretty soon you end up with Barbie," said Hany Farid, a professor of computer science and a digital forensics expert at Dartmouth.

And that is a problem, feminist legislators in France, Britain and Norway say, and they want digitally altered photos to be labeled. In June, the American Medical Association adopted a policy on body image and advertising that urged advertisers and others to "discourage the altering of photographs in a manner that could promote unrealistic expectations of appropriate body image."

... Dr. Farid and Eric Kee, a Ph.D. student in computer science at Dartmouth, are proposing a software tool for measuring how much fashion and beauty photos have been altered, a 1-to-5 scale that distinguishes the infinitesimal from the fantastic. Their research is being published this week in a scholarly journal, The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Students: Tell us how you feel about retouched images of celebrities and models that make them look much better. Do you think that looking at many such images can affect one's own body image? How? Do you think these photos should be labeled? If so, how? That is, do you like the system proposed by Dr. Farid and Eric Kee to rate alterations on a scale of 1 to 5? Would you agree with the magazine editor who says that readers aren't fooled anymore by photo retouching?

Students 13 and older are invited to comment below. Please use only your first name. For privacy policy reasons, we will not publish student comments that include a last name.

Teachers: Here are 10 ways to teach with this feature.

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Do Photoshopped Images Make You Feel Bad About Your Own Looks?

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Before you answer the question, take a look at the 10 before-and-after photos that illustrate this article. How do you feel about this kind of altering of photos of models and celebrities? Do you agree with those who want to label retouched images like these because they may promote unrealistic expectations of appropriate body image and contribute to eating disorders?

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Interesting article on how the media effects body image (specifically in women.)
One quote from the article that I think is especially important for women to understand is "The average female fashion model wears a size two or four, for instance, while the average American woman wears a size 12 to 14" . Women need to understand that even though models may look a certain way, that is not the "average" body type. This article is relevant globally.

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These days we know that the media and body image are closely related. Particularly, the body image advertising portrays affects our own body image. Of course, there are many other things that influence our body image: parenting, education, intimate relationships, and so on. The popular media does have a big impact, though.

The Media and Body Image
Together, Americans spend 250 billion hours watching television every year. According to the California State University at Northridge, advertising accounts for about 30 percent of all television air time. The average child watches 20,000 television commercials every year. Of course, television is not the only place we see advertisements. Popular magazines, particularly women's magazines and many teen's magazines, are brimming with ads. We even see pop-up ads online.

Anything we look at for so many hours has to affect us. The media and body image are closely related due to the number of images we see in the media and the excessive amount of exposure we have to those images.
The Body Image Advertising Portrays
Although advertising aims to convince us to buy things, ads seldom portray people that look like us. The average female fashion model wears a size two or four, for instance, while the average American woman wears a size 12 to 14. Clothing designers often say they only use very thin models because the clothes simply look better on them. In addition, photos of models in print ads are often "touched up" in order to disguise minor flaws or make the model appear even skinnier than she really is. The bottom line is that the body image advertising portrays seldom looks like the people the ads are aimed at.
The Effects of False Body Image Advertising

These "false body image" ads, showing bodies that are not real at all or that are not very realistic or representative of the general population, have far-reaching effects. It might seem that we could recognize when ads showed us something not real; after all, when we see a dog food commercial featuring a talking dog, we aren't fooled into thinking dogs can really speak, right?

But we still tend to trust what we see in the media and body image can easily be confused. The constant barrage of unrealistically skinny images can stir up feelings of inadequacy, anxiety and depression. It can even lead to the development of eating disorders like anorexia and bulimia.
What Can Be Done About False Body Image Advertising?
We can notify advertisers that we object to these "false body image" ads. Advertisers do care what their intended audience thinks of their ads. A single letter from one television viewer may not have much influence, but if a large number of concerned viewers contact advertisers with their concerns, that likely will make an impact.

Contacting advertisers about the media and body image issues remains a long-term strategy, though. While it may be effective, we cannot expect an immediate change. In the meantime, we can limit our exposure to media images, especially advertising. We can also view ads critically, asking ourselves how realistic the images appear and thinking about how they do or do not relate to us.

It is also important to be aware of the effects images in the media can have on us. People that notice signs of anxiety or depression related to body image should consider seeing a counselor for help coping with their feelings. Anyone with signs of an eating disorder, such as losing excessive weight, eating a very limited diet, vomiting after meals or health problems related to weight loss or malnutrition, should seek treatment promptly.

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The Media And Body Image - Mirror-Mirror

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These days we know that the media and body image are closely related. Particularly, the body image advertising portrays affects our own body image. Of course, there are many other things that influence our body image: parenting, education, intimate relationships, and so on. The popular media does have a big impact, though.

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I chose these examples to compare the different beauty expectations that women are forced upon by the media. You can see here that the media makes women feel less beautiful in the skin they were born in, darker skin needs to be lighter, and lighter skin needs to be darker. It is interesting to see the different beauty ideals globally. I also chose this website link because it talks about how media sets unrealistic body/beauty standards for women that leave us insecure and comparing ourselves to the women we see in advertisements. The media is the reason why women are so hard on themselves. The media is why we always aspire to be what we are not, skinnier, tanner, blemish free, it is unrealistic and unnatural. Women should feel confident in the skin they were born into.

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The image below shows the original photo versus the photoshopped version. One thing I really took away from this photo was that the women received a huge amount of photoshop in their faces, weight and skin tone, where as the only thing noticeable about the man's after photo was that he had dark hair. This is a prime example of how the media is harder on women. Women need to be skinny, lighter skinned, blemish free. The media paints a cookie-cutter image and if women don't look like that, they begin to hate themselves because this is what the media says is "normal".

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In this video women are altered to become cover models. They are transformed into the beauty expectations that the media has shoved down women's throats for years. The women were photoshopped thinner, lighter skin, no imperfections, each hair perfectly placed. You can hear the women's expressions change after they view the "after" picture. They started off the video as being giddy, excited but nervous at the same time. The video continues and they grow serious, sad almost. They question "why would anyone want to change someone this much?" as well as “We live in a really interesting time where we feel like we have to make people look to the standard that’s not attainable for anybody.”
I thought this was a great video that should be used in all classrooms (especially middle school and high school) so women don't grow up believing that they need to look exactly like the women in media. Women should feel beautiful with their beauty marks, they should try to cover them with photoshop. Be confident in who you are.

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Photoshopping Real Women Into Cover Models

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I chose the image, videos and website to show how photoshopping in the media affects women. These videos show "real" women undergoing photoshop and feeling sad with the results, questioning why they need photoshopping and by the end of the video it has the women talking about how everyone needs to be comfortable with the way they look and not let the media make them feel otherwise. Photoshopping in the media creates an unrealistic image that even cover models can't achieve.

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This is an extremely sexist ad that was aired in 2012 during the Super Bowl. This company sells flowers, and the only time they show flowers is at the end of the advertisement. The entire advertisement shows a beautiful woman applying makeup and putting on sexy lingerie. At the end of the advertisement she says "...give, and you shall receive". This leaves viewers with the belief that if they give their partner flowers for valentines day, they will be rewarded with sex. This is just one example of how women are always portrayed as sexual objects in the media.

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Adriana Lima Teleflora Ad - 2012 Super Bowl

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In this photo we see the different styles of advertising between men and women. Both models are wearing the same shirt, however the female's shirt is un-buttoned and the male's shirt is done up completely. This shows that women are highly sexualized in the media. We discussed this in course content, how men are always portrayed as put together and strong figures, where as women are portrayed as sexual objects.

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This is an advertisement for a company's hotel services. Nowhere in this ad is a picture of a hotel, beach or anything that would be relevant to the services they are advertising. Instead, they chose to sexualize a woman and state "stop staring and take her picture" referring to the code on her back. This is an example of how media uses sexualization of women to sell a service.

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Just another example of women being sexualized in the media... This advertisement shows men standing over a woman, totally irrelevant to what the company is selling. Not only are they showing sexualization of a female, but they are also showing how the media views men as the superior gender, while these men stand by watching as a woman lays "helpless" on the ground. We learned a lot about how men are deemed as the superior gender in our course content, and how it can be portrayed in media, and this is just another example of that. We learned specifically about women's roles during the social construction of gender section and this is an example of what the media wants women to be portrayed as, a sexual object who will "just lay there and take it", helpless and timid while intimidating men stand around her watching.

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I chose these advertisements to show exactly how women are portrayed in media. They are sexualized, shown as in superior, all because "sex sells" in the media industry. This is a sad topic still relevant in today's time, women are seen as sexual objects that can be bought with gifts. We learned a lot about how women are sexualized globally during module two. All of these examples are global as they are seen nation-wide on television. The flannel t-shirt is specific to North America, the hotel ad Texas, but the Super Bowl ad is global and all women are affected by the portrayal and sexualization of the woman in the video.

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These are statistics I found from https://medium.com/social-media-as-news-cod/how-social-media-impacts-beauty-standards-for-boys-and-girls-b6bebb6386ac on how media affects young girls due to the unrealistic body images sent out by the media.

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This article talks about how media affects women's lives including body image and what they purchase. "Dove surveyed 1,027 women between the ages of 18 and 64.The results showed that women are more than twice as likely to say that their conception of beauty is shaped by “women in the public domain” and social media". This article also mentions how the media's influence on women can be negative, "Much of the survey sample (78 percent) felt that the portrayal of women on social media is unrealistic" and also that 82 percent of the surveyors believe that media can be the influencer to make women feel more confident in their bodies.

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What shapes our perception of beauty? When we answer that question, we tend to talk about models, and movies, and unattainable standards of perfection. But a study by Dove shows that more than ever before, women are looking to people like themselves for beauty inspiration-or more specifically, to the women they see while scrolling through social media.

Dove surveyed 1,027 women between the ages of 18 and 64. The results showed that women are more than twice as likely to say that their conception of beauty is shaped by "women in the public domain" and social media (29 percent and 25 percent , respectively) than they were before they entered high school (11 percent and 10 percent, respectively).

That influence is not always a positive one. A 2014 Dove study that women wrote 5 million disparaging tweets about beauty, most of which were about themselves. Much of the survey sample (78 percent ) felt that the portrayal of women on social media is unrealistic. But 82 percent of women also said they believed social media can change prevailing standards of beauty.

"The thousands of beauty bloggers are testament to women becoming their own media creators who are influencing the beauty conversation," Dove wrote in its study. "Whether women are rating beauty products, giving each other advice or sharing personal beauty/body image stories, or posting their own images or 'selfies,' beauty has become more personalized and more inclusive on the Internet."

You don't have to poke around on the Internet too long to realize that there has been a great democratization of beauty of late. Blogs, Instagram accounts, and Twitter hashtags galore call for a celebration of different body shapes, ethnicities, and ages. There are many women whose presences on social media are shaking up pervasive definitions of what is and what is not beautiful. Here are five you should know about:
Rachel Hollis
Rachel Hollis, who runs a lifestyle blog called The Chic Site, made headlines a few weeks ago when she posted a photo of herself in a bikini. It seems so mundane, but the photo exploded on social media because Hollis made no attempt to hide her stretch marks (gasp!). "I have stretch marks and I wear a bikini," she wrote on the . "I have a belly that's permanently flabby from carrying three giant babies and I wear a bikini. My belly button is saggy... (which is something I didn't even know was possible before!!) and I wear a bikini. I wear a bikini because I'm proud of this body and every mark on it."
Chantelle Winnie
Chantelle Winnie is a fashion model with a skin condition called vitiligo (the same disorder that made Michael Jackson's skin turn white). Winnie's Instagram account is chock full of photos from professional shoots, her skin on full display. "If humans want to see the same types of people over and over that's what industries will give us," Winnie The Guardian. "If we want to see something different that's what they'll have to give us."
Jes Baker
Two years ago, Jes Baker made headlines when she published an open letter to former Abercormbie & Fitch CEO Mike Jeffries, calling him out for his blatant sizeism . The letter also included a series of mock Abercormbie ads, featuring Baker-who is plus-sized-posing with a male model. Today, she blogs under the name Militant Baker , writing about body image, mental health, and fashion.
Lizzie Velasquez
Because she suffers from a rare genetic disorder that prevents her from gaining any weight, 26-year-old Lizzie Velásquez has never weighed more than 64 pounds. When she was in high school, Lizzie found a YouTube video of herself titled "The Ugliest Woman in the World." Rather than shy away from the platform, she launched her own YouTube , where she posts videos about beauty, body positivity, and kindness. Read Women in the World 's interview with Lizzie .
Melanie Elturk
Founder of a retail site called , Elturk advocates for style that is both modest and vibrant. Her Instagram account features Muslim women from around the world (and Elturk herself) modelling bright headscarves and some thoroughly chic outfits.

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New study shows impact of social media on beauty standards

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What shapes our perception of beauty? When we answer that question, we tend to talk about models, and movies, and unattainable standards of perfection. But a study by Dove shows that more than ever before, women are looking to people like themselves for beauty inspiration-or more specifically, to the women they see while scrolling through social media.

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I chose this statistic image and this article because it shows just how much women are influenced by media and the beauty standards it sets. I also think the article is especially important because it mentions that women believe that social media can change and benefit women more positively. Instead of seeing photoshopped advertisements, we are moving in the right direction by showing beautiful, realistic photos of real women. These ads weren't specific to one country, they are global as women all over the world are affected by media.

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I chose to section off my assignment into four parts.
Although the entire media presence in women is global (whether via internet, street advertisements or magazines, all women, all over the world, are affected by media presence.
I chose the comparison between beauty ideals in North America vs India to show that the media always wants women to strive for something they don't have.
I chose photoshopping in media to show how it negatively affects women's outlook on themselves as well as how women are photoshopped to a higher standard than men.
I chose to talk about how media portrays women as sexual objects because it is important for women (especially young girls) to realize that we are not sexual objects, and we should not feel the need to reward men with sex because they give us a valentines gift.
Finally, I chose how media affects women so viewers can understand just how influenced they are by media around the world.
Throughout the course we learned about how women have certain expectations that the media can be responsible for, and based on course content this is what I have come up with...