222358 part one

26.07.2015

PHOTO MANIPULATION RESEARCH

References:

http://mediasmarts.ca/body-image/body-image-photo-manipulation

Photo manipulation, once the preserve of a small number of airbrush-equipped artists, has become commonplace in the fashion, publishing and advertising industries.

As a result, heavily retouched photos – of men as well as women – have become nearly universal. For example, a single issue of Vogue was found to contain 144 manipulated images, including the cover.

As photo manipulation tools have become more widely available and easier to use, youth have begun turning to them to modify their own photos to meet media-created ideals of thinness and perfection.

As photo manipulation tools have become more widely available and easier to use (photoshop), youth have begun turning to them to modify their own photos to meet media-created ideals of thinness and perfection.

Retouching photos in this way raises a number of concerns.

One is that the already unrealistic bodies youth are exposed to be made literally impossible. In some cases, real women’s bodies have been abandoned completely, as in the ads created for retailer H&M that put models’ heads onto computer-generated bodies.

Is this really how the world should be?

Is this what you want for your son or daughter when they become a teenager?

Is this how we should/want to be living?

Photo manipulation reduces the number of different body shapes represented in media, pushing everyone to a single standard – ‘slim perfection.’

It’s hardly a secret that many bodies seen in media are digitally manipulated: a 2011 study found that 84 per cent of British young women knew what photo manipulation was and how it was used, and the same number agreed that using it to change models’ bodies should be unacceptable.

So why are we still conforming to these stereotypes?

Dr. Kim Bissell, founder of the Child Media Lab at the University of Alabama, puts it, “We know they’re Photoshopped, but we still want to look like that.” In fact, studies show that young girls often use photo manipulation software to retouch their own photos.

We must stop exposing impressionable children and teenagers to advertisements portraying models with body types only attainable with the help of photo editing software.