Reality Revised: The Photoshop Effect

A few Friday films for you to consider:

Reality Revised: Digital Augmentation

Here's the truth:

"Girls reported magazines as their primary source of information regarding diet and health."

Unfortunately, magazines are an excessively unfair representation of the actual female body.  Airbrushed, reshaped, and digitally reduced, there's nothing but unrealistic expectation left for the readers.

Here's the results:

"A majority of girls in a 1999 study (59 percent) reported dissatisfaction with their body shape, and 66 percent expressed a desire to lose weight. Only 29 percent of the girls were overweight."

"At age thirteen, 53% of American girls are “unhappy with their bodies.” This grows to 78% by the time girls reach seventeen."

An airbrushed picture has lost of the beauty of its reality.  It shows no facial lines of emotion, no scars of surviving, no meals enjoyed, no children born. It reveals no stories or strength.  

Enjoy the reality of your body, or in the far more eloquent words of John Keats:

'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.'

Reality Revised: Comparisons

This is a really, real quote from a really, real lady:

"I've been that girl, flipping through magazines trying to find just one person who looked a little bit like me. And when I didn't find it I would start to think there's something wrong with the way that I looked."

Response to a Glamour article on real women's bodies. 

And here's the wistful dream:

 

Stop comparing: to your darling starlet, to the cover of your pet magazine, to yourself five years ago.  Cease staring at your sister's stomach to discern any trace of a stomach roll beneath her blouse.  Desist browsing weekly magazines with fresh pictures of celebrity cellulite.

External body validation is excessively volatile.  Build a buttress of impervious, internal confidence. Love your body exactly as it is, at this very instant. Cherish the strength of your legs, the curve of your neck, the grace of your fingers, the soft skin on your upper arms. No one else can tamper with your own admiration.

There is no universal ideal.  One set of proportions does not fit all.  One set of proportions will not even fit a single individual for an entire life.

Case in point: Marilyn vs. Audrey.  Who is more beautiful?  Marilyn self reported "a soft abdomen and short legs."  Audrey Hepburn was self conscious about her large feet and prominent ears.

M.M. (N.J.M.)	A.K.H.
Blonde Hair	Brown Hair
Blue Eyes	Brown Eyes
5 ft 5 in	5 ft 7 in
118-140 lbs	103 lbs
BMI 23.3	BMI 16.5
C Cup	A Cup
Vintage Size 10-12	Vintage size 2-4

Reality Revised

In 1995 a bunch of folks called up their lady friends and gathered some pencils, calculators, and fashion magazines. Each lady volunteer was given three minutes to peruse models in a fashion magazine, 70% of the hundreds of miss and missus surveyed felt depressed, guilty, and ashamed following the activity.

Cardigan Empire is dedicating its next several posts to undressing the layers of deception cloaking the reality of commercial and celebrity fashion, while heralding the heroism of the un-retouched form.