Morality, Unrealistic Ideal Of Smooth Skin

Nobody’s perfect. Even the most glamorous movie stars and models have blemishes on their faces but nobody likes to see them in his photograph. As a photographer it is your responsibility that your subject looks his/her best in his photograph. One of the hidden secret of photo retouchers is how they achieve the soft, smooth, yet as the same time retaining sharp skin textures. You may have seen many retouching examples with grossly over-blurred skin with no visible pores or texture. This type of skin looks too smooth, fake, and plastic and anybody can easily detect that image has been blurred to soften the skin. This is what any retoucher wants to avoid because it is the skin

Within the past few decades, technology has completely transformed. The height and talent of today’s technology has completely changed America and its views. Technology has completely changed and expanded over the past 20 years. Within the past decade a new form of editing technology was created, and that technology is Photoshop. Photoshop is a software used to alter images. In todays day and age, photoshop has become the norm. It is everywhere and it cannot be escaped. Photoshop is used on everything and everyone, and it is affecting us at an extremely negative rate. Due to the works of Photoshop being used on every single media platform, society has adapted to the perfection in photos that were altered by Photoshop. What the world sees when they look at a photoshopped picture is what a company views as perfection, and this image creates an unhealthy comparison between the viewer, the image, and those around them. With Photoshop, images are altered beyond recognition. The Photoshop software takes away any blemish and flaw, and it can make the model used in the photo unrealistically thin, and by this it creates an unachievable body image. When these images are viewed by society, they only see the photo, and they don’t see the hours and hours spent altering the image to actually make them appear this way. So, when society, especially young children and young adults, see these insanely altered images they see something that isn’t real. They see someone that isn’t realistic,

Today, we can find tabloids and magazines on shelves of supermarkets or kiosks with pictures of celebrities or occasionally normal people who do not realize that they were photographed while they were in their home or enjoying their vacations. The motivation for those photographers who take those photos are probably the same which motivated Darwin Bonaparte to film John in the novel “Brave New World”. They aspire to be famous and wealthy. They are truly selfish, irresponsible and materialistic. Indeed, they gravely violate the right of those people to have privacy. For example, an article published in the USA Today mentions and presents different opinions about it,

Lovelock begins talking about Instagram, a social media platform which is used to share pictures with your followers. He talks about how people tend to upload photos with the #transformationtuesday, claiming to have transformed their physical features. As more pictures that are being recently uploaded within social media, the further we see people enhancing their photos to become flawless. As we dig further into the social media side of the internet, we are going to see just how much influence society has on people and their decision to become who they perceive as perfect. Throughout the

No one is confident inside and out, but social media put a label on what is the definition of beautiful. Social media have completely replaced face-to-face interaction and formed a false relationship. The media, although widely used, disconnects a person from the true nature of being human. Interaction becomes less and more anxiety begin to form when faced with a problem that is only solved head on in person. Future generations will have problems with physical and social problems since the media is such an important part of

People can change their physiques, their looks, their personality, almost everything, but they cannot change their Factor X. Fukuyama believes, “Factor X is the human essence, the most basic meaning of what it is to be human. If all human beings are in fact equal in dignity, then X must be some characteristic universally possessed by them” (187). Factor X cannot be altered or fabricated and is unchangeable. It is what makes everyone human and that disregards looks and standards society places. Acknowledging the media, “Of course while media lets everyone present themselves like movie stars…the individuals user is still looking at her real self in the mirror, without the benefit of Instagram filters, and the comparison – even though false – is bound to be unflattering” (Sass). With all these new technological devices, it has led to people altering their photos to fit more into society’s standards. But at the end of the day, one looks into a mirror and see’s their true self and not their adjusted photo, which brings down people’s self-esteem even more. Society has indoctrinated people and people seem to revolve around appearances and physiques, but Factor X is what makes us human and different from other creatures. No matter what you change, Factor X will never change in a person because that is something everyone is born with and will die with.

Image is everything in today’s society appearance of things have become more important that what they really are and these images are being constantly fed to us through the media. Image has both a positive and negative influence on the individual but most people have been drawn into

Beauty is America’s outlet of perfection for the average ego, an industry solely based on the prevailing taste of the age, packaging “beauty” as a product for its admirers. This magical bottle can be found on just about any shelf, from daily nutritious food items down the aisle, to the magazines that catch the eye on the way to check out. Digital photo editing has a lot to do with the reason why our society thinks this way. It has its upsides to it like increased product evaluation and therapeutic values, but it also has shown byproducts (that have either directly or indirectly led to things) such as false adverting, lower self-esteem, anorexia and even obesity.

There’s a new trend going on social media called the don’t judge me challenge. It based on girls or boys draw themselves a unibrow and fake pimples and mess up their hair. They call it the “geek look”. This was intend to end bulling but I feel like it made it worse. In this challenge the kids record themselves looking “ugly” and then they pretend to put lotion of their face then they cover the camera with their hand and when they uncover the camera they revel there truth self. Girls revel themselves with makeup their hair straight and posing like if they were supper models. When I saw this it really upset me, it’s so sad how social media defines beauty. Having acne doesn’t not mean you are ugly. To be consider a beautiful woman now in days

Due to the increase in popularity of social media, today’s generation is bombarded with unrealistic standards when it comes to beauty. When young people today first turn on their cellphones, more often than not, they refer to a social media site. Whether it’s the ever-popular Instagram, where people can post pictures and followers can “like” to show their approval or post comments. Or, whether it’s Twitter, where people can post witty or inspiring or informational things for their followers to see and can be retweeted or favourited. Or they could click on the little blue Facebook icon, where all of the above can happen. These are some of the most popular social media outlets today because young people are

Although Sturken and Cartwright claim it is quite easy to fall for the misconception that photographs are “unmediated copies of the real world” (Sturken & Cartwright, 17), this is no longer true, if it ever was. While cumbersome, even before the advent of image editing software, it was possible to modify photographs. Furthermore, in contemporary society, we have completely lost faith in mass media representation; rarely do people expect images to be completely unmodified anymore. This is especially visible in western culture since people are pressured to conform into highly specific aesthetics where even a “natural” look is artificially crafted with makeup and digital filters. Even disregarding direct manipulation to a print through methods such as Photoshop, photographs are manipulated in such obvious ways, it almost seems absurd to point it out. The framing, lighting, and positioning are always adjusted by the photographer. Therefore, people themselves are a type of manipulation; a representative filter through which biases are imbued. In effect, Sturken and Cartwright’s conclusion that all camera-generated images bear an “aura of machine objectivity” (Sturken & Cartwright, 16) stemming from “the … legacy of still-photography” (Sturken & Cartwright, 17) is

Beginning in the earliest centuries of kings being painted taller, to Lincoln having his ruddy skin being removed from his portraits, retouching has been apart of art. Yet, the new version of “retouching” has become too extreme and too mass produced to be acceptable. When “retouching” begins causing life threatening eating disorders, negative body image and distorted perceptions on the human body it stops being just “retouching”. When one photographer’s editing work has young women and men wondering where they are going wrong because they do not look like the “retouched” models, it is a problem. Photoshop has become a major issue throughout the world and most people do not even know it. It is only through publicity and the anti-Photoshop campaigns that it may come to an

Every single day when I wake up in the morning, one of the first things I do is look at myself in the mirror. Am I skinny enough? Is my skin clear enough? Do I look like the girl from the magazine I was reading yesterday? No. I don’t. But I’ll keep asking these questions each and everyday because that is what the media tells me I need to look like. Because if my waist isn’t small enough I’m not pretty. Because if I have cellulite on my legs there’s something wrong with me. Because if I don’t slot into this unattainable standard. I'm not beautiful. Airbrushing and photoshopping models in pictures to display through media is something that frankly speaking is appalling. We are alienating beautiful human beings because of the media’s dictations on what we should look like. I am sick of being brainwashed to the point where all I can ever seem to do is single out the ‘flaws’ in myself. If we display, real, beautiful, raw pictures of people in media then so many problems caused by this would no longer exist.

Society follows a norm that requires a general agreement between groups in order to function as a whole. Human beings are social “group animals” (Lessing 1) and need each other to survive with the intention to get along or fit in. These desires to conform “influence our idea about ourselves” (Lessing 1) and people lose a sense of their inner self based on these insecurities. The false concept of ideal beauty of body image is displayed in the media and it pressures young women and men to accept this particular notion of beauty. The role of the media comes into play because it pressures individuals to give in, since they appeal to our need, which is to be accepted. Although, people oppose to media pressuring individuals to conform, it is clear

Social Media has a massive impact on a person’s self-presentation because of the different trends where everyone wants to fit in with society’s expectations of what we should look like. Celebrities are made to be our role models, however, magazines photoshop and make them more toned and a lot slimmer, which makes young people want to make their bodies more like theirs. This then leads to the modern generation becoming self-conscious because they feel they have to fit in and achieve an ideal self that fits in with those around them.