Glamour vs GlamourOUS

alt4852 wrote in post #8772788
how about corrective eye surgery or braces/teeth whitening? it is statistically impossible for everyone to have perfect vision, yet it's not frowned upon when someone opts to have the procedure done, even if it's for cosmetic reasons. the same can be said about straight, white teeth.

Now you're aguing just to argue! Get real. The average woman cannot diet to Size 2, nor can surgery give her that size either. Braces are available and so is teeth whitening, and while both are cosmetic braces are a necessity in cases. All are achievable within reason. Eye surgery, when it means vision correction without glasses, makes some occupations attainable (have you ever seen a fighter pilot or austronaut with glasses?!)

alt4852 wrote in post #8772788
but that's what i'm trying to say. aside from the person having modifications done, who are we to say that anything is necessary or unnecessary? i don't think it's fair for any of us to project our beliefs onto what other people choose to do with their bodies. if an unnatural breast enlargement makes a woman happy, how is that a bad thing?

It is not the necessity, it is the unrealistic attainability caused by these images being brainwashed into the naive youth of society.

Wilt. I love you.

I weight train. Will I realistically turn into Arnie? To a degree it is possible, attainable even, but not without an inordinate amount of effort, dieting, creatine...you get the picture.
It is practically unattainable. But where that differs, is I'm not being brainwashed to bench 500lbs. I train for fun, and to help out my brother-in-law-to-be, who's training as a PT. Win win.

Contrast to a girl who reads XYZ magazine and compares herself subconsciously to the models. A stream of perfect, airbrushed and glossed-over half-porn-half-factual-half-girlnextdoor is being washed over the populous by the media.
That, over time, is known as somatic programming. And tampering with your somatic unbeknownst to yourself is, at best, extremely dangerous.

Psychobiker wrote in post #8772887
all you need to do is eat less, eat even less, vomit some, prostitute yourself, liquify your Bs into a DD, dye your hair blonde, up the saturation on your eyes and gaussian blur your pores.

you're describing eating disorders and prostitution. one is a psychological disorder, and the other is a profession that has existed long before photoshop. if you think photoshop is responsible for low self esteem among women, i think you're in for a surprise.

but that's the thing, i don't think anyone's saying that. i have plenty of friends who read vogue and stare at the porcelain faces in magazines, yet are fully capable of knowing how to moderate how much they want to internalize. they all have healthy self esteems, have normal jobs, and foster healthy relationships. i guess what i'm trying to say is that you CAN be saturated with this sort of media and still possess a healthy view of yourself and your own sense of worth and value.

i don't think it's fair to say that most girls will turn into prostitutes or strippers. once again, i think you're targeting extremes. yes, some people do go down that path, but most people are more or less well-adjusted and are able to filter through what they see and hear to make balanced and healthy decisions.

Wilt wrote in post #8773096
Now you're aguing just to argue! Get real. The average woman cannot diet to Size 2, nor can surgery give her that size either. Braces are available and so it teeth whitening, and while both are cosmetic braces are a necessity in cases. All are achievable within reason. Eye surgery, when it means vision correction without glasses, makes some occupations attainable (have you ever seen a fighter pilot or austronaut with glasses?!)

if you read my post, i specifically mentioned it with the point that many people also do it solely for cosmetic reasons. i'm not trying to be difficult, i'm just saying that braces and corrective eye surgery are not NECESSITIES in any sense of the word. if someone wants to be a fighter pilot or an astronaut, that's more or less using the pursuit of happiness or actualization that spurs them to do it. manipulating your body to what you believe is ideal is also a form of self actualization.

humanity is a bell curve. it is unrealistic to to believe that you will ever be the best at something. it is simply an unrealistic attainability. why strive for anything if the odds are stacked against you? i think we've established that a minute fraction of the world population does look that good naturally. what's the harm in trying to reach that sort of ideal of perfection?

Psychobiker wrote in post #8773112
Wilt. I love you.

I weight train. Will I realistically turn into Arnie? To a degree it is possible, attainable even, but not without an inordinate amount of effort, dieting, creatine...you get the picture.
It is practically unattainable.

so are you saying those who weight train should just be happy the way they are and not bother?

Psychobiker, your rationalization of why Photoshopping women into Size 2 (when the reality is Size 6 in real life) is OK is turning the blind eye, which causes young women (like our youngest daughter while she was in high school) to purge minutes after eating dinner, and I cannot condone anything which puts healthy people at risk (which purging to achieve Size 2 does to some people's outlook of themselves)

No alt, I'm not saying that. There is a point where it goes beyond the 'norm' and into some stratospheric category of size and build. Read the female equivalent as size 2 with E cups.

Psychobiker wrote in post #8773171
Read the female equivalent as size 2 with E cups.

Yeah, the E cups would not fit, she'd have to wear them outside the dress.

Wilt wrote in post #8773197
Yeah, the E cups would not fit, she'd have to wear them outside the dress.

I had a mate with that problem. Well, scale it up a size or two. But naturally!!

rral22 wrote in post #8770161
There is no such thing as "unaltered, un-Photoshop-poked beautiful people".

'

Thats not what my mommy tells me....

Psychobiker wrote in post #8773171
No alt, I'm not saying that. There is a point where it goes beyond the 'norm' and into some stratospheric category of size and build. Read the female equivalent as size 2 with E cups.

i see what you're saying, but making that point also forces you to concede that idealized individuals do exist outside the realm of digital manipulation. therefore, photos of audrey hepburn back in her day are no less ego-crushing for average girls than photoshopped images in my opinion.

they both depict unrealistic standards, despite being "real" in the sense that they exist in the world. i'm sure girls from that era also mentally abused themselves for not being as pretty or charming as the celebrities. it's just a different time period with corresponding social idols of the day.

You should move to France. lol

http://www.telegraph.c​o.uk …rbrushed-photographs.html

This is a fascinating thread....mind if I jump in?

Psychobiker wrote in post #8771646
http://guanabee.com …kardashian-unphotoshopped Followed by http://4.media.tumblr.​com …r0lxtwvflTRpJGd​o1_500.jpg Who said that there's something wrong before?!

Society as a whole through generations of "striving to be the best". The problem is that "the best" as a definition has slewed viciously against anything rational.

rral22 wrote in post #8772142
In case there are any who haven't seen this:
http://www.youtube.com​/watch?v=iYhCn0jf46U

Thanks. Shocking. The ad is not the model. So what exactly is the point?
Money.

Wilt wrote in post #8772430
The truly beautiful ones are often head cases. Gimme a reasonable attractive normal and emotionally balanced woman anytime, over the head case!

Ouch! That hurt....or haven't you seen my Avatar?

Seriously though - and living in Japan which is depressingly full of beautiful women, from the Gas Station to the Convenience Store - it's not the "beauty" per se but the way people close by (initially the parents/close relatives, I suspect) whose reactions highlight "the look" as having more importance than what's under the surface that causes girls to lose the plot.

alt4852 wrote in post #8773121
....i guess what i'm trying to say is that you CAN be saturated with this sort of media and still possess a healthy view of yourself and your own sense of worth and value...

(Sorry I had to clip a lot there alt4852) But the issue there is that more and more girls are less and less able to develop a healthy view of themselves, and I think the OP is suggesting that over-use of image editing to "beautify" women all within set guidelines doesn't exactly help.
I would side with Wilt, in that our societies are in need of a 100,000 year over-haul.
btw, anyone seen THIS SITE from Christy Schuler? She's advocating a retention of skin details, but with less overall blemishes. Maybe this, as a "slowly does it" approach could get us back to where beauty is what we are, and not what some software can make us.

That Dove ad is just scary. But a precise take on what the media is feeding us with.

Yes, there are loads of people who can see through the 'fakeness'. But say in hypothesis, for every one that can, there are two that can't.
Alt, I agree with you that there are idealised individuals outisde of the digital/film realm. To say otherwise is stupid. But the same remains - they are being 'normalised' to reflect what 'beauty' is meant to be and the more this is reinforced and hammered into the upcoming generations that you must look like Doutzen Kroes with/without Photoshop is completely unrealistic for many, many girls.

As for depression etc., I am aware that people compared themselves loooong before now, but I have to wonder - was it as prevalent? You could elect to buy magazines, turn on the TV...OK, you still can - but walk down the street. Billboards of unrealistically beautiful people weren't the norm at one stage.

I for one have a friend in the beauty industry who says that it's a daily occurrence to see a 20+lbs overweight person bring in a heavily manipulated picture of eg. Paris Hilton and actually expect to be made look thus. When she informs them that it's impossible, cue liquid crash diets, 'diet pills', negative self image....Delusion, while not very prevalent, will become more and more prevalent if people believe that just being 'normal' is not OK.

Skygod, that website is closer to reality than most - and I half-support what's going on there. However, it's still minorly distorting reality, which isn't OK...but not doing it to such a level that the person is no longer recognisable (Dove ad).
Blemish cover (Read into that what you will, rouge, makeup etc etc) isn't new, and it's very easy to discern in reality. Ask most of the youth (who if we don't watch, will eventually grow to believe the media) to analyse a photo and tell you it 'isn't real' <---manipulated, and they'll not be able to.
That's why I support the French idea. It's clearly delineating digital art from photography.

So, a woman goes to a studio and gets her portrait taken. Photographer works his photoshop magic, cleans up blemishes, smooth the wrinkles, touch up the eyes, etc.. Woman is ecstatic with it. What happens the next day when she looks in the mirror and looks nothing like the picture? More importantly how do you decide how much is acceptable and how much is to much?

Not trying to be an jerk, just an honest question.

Dave......

Dave. Nail on head.

They look at the picture in their hand/on laptop, and look in the mirror and can't correlate the two sometimes. That is going too far.

Take for instance this photo of mine : http://farm4.static.fl​ickr.com …09445982_3c133d​7050_o.jpg

Zero retouching. Vignette and desaturation because the magazine wanted that, but I flat out told the editor I refuse to modify her skin/features. If you can't tell at 1200x800 that no skin work was done then...Not that she 'needs' it. Out came the thing in glossy A4 and I was pleased to see that their graphic editors hadn't wreaked havoc.