I’ve decided that Photoshop has destroyed our perception of beauty. There, I’ve said it. Many of you might disagree, but please hear me out. Photoshop is am amazing invention. I bow to all those with superior Photoshopping skills. Heck, I wish I had them. But at some point, when it comes to representing actual human beings, enough is enough. This isn’t a new complaint, of course. Poor Faith Hill was so thoroughly nipped, tucked, sucked and plucked by Redbook in that now-famous Jezebel expose
that she probably half expected to get a plastic surgery bill in the mail. But after seeing the recent shots of Demi Moore for V Magazine, my eyes glazed over again as I looked at what some photo editor thought an already beautiful woman should look like.
Apparently, she’s supposed to look like Lucite. Demi Moore is a great looking woman, period. At 45, she is probably in better shape than most women half her age. But these shots, these shots don’t show a healthy, vibrant 45-year-old woman. They don’t show a real woman at all. At any age, our faces — our entire bodies — have lines and contours, ripples and bulges. They have depth and dimension and, yes, imperfections. And often times it’s those imperfections that make us more beautiful. Can you spot an imperfection here? Or any glint of humanity, for that matter?
Now, I’m dating myself, but I clearly remember the first school pictures where we could have the option of having any “blemishes” removed. Touch-ups were extra, but oh, how we all begged our parents to spring for the possibility of perfection. It was a luxury then. But today, it’s standard practice and, might I add, way the hell out of control. Yes, every magazine cover in America (save, perhaps, the news magazines) gets touched up. I understand that. And there is nothing wrong with zapping a zit here or a smoothing a puffy eye there. But must we distort the image of what it means to be beautiful so much that even the most beautiful among us cannot adhere to them? If Demi Moore isn’t pretty enough for V Magazine au naturelle, who the heck is?
Some might ask, what’s the harm in perfecting perfection? Why get all upset about making our most beautiful even more beautiful? Well, there is a lot of harm to get upset about. We live in a society where 1 in 5 women struggles with eating disorders or disordered eating and where 90 percent of people with eating disorders are women between the ages of 12 and 25. A society where half of all girls between the ages of 11 and 13 see themselves as overweight. So for magazines aimed at young women to purposely destroy the beauty standard with their unattainable images is not only wrong, it’s downright evil. If a picture speaks 1,000 words, just think about what kinds of words those Photoshopped pictures are speaking to women everywhere. Well, there is one thing V Magazine got right. When it comes to Photoshopping, it should be that less is more.
