Why Magazines Should Stop Retouching Models’ Bodies

Have you ever read Elle or Cosmopolitan? Have you seen how cute and perfect the models looked? Did you wish you could, in 10 years, look like them? I used to think that but I had a reality check. Magazines should not retouch or use Photoshop on the models because their bodies are VERY disproportional and very fake, it creates a bad influence in teens and women everywhere, and it encourages people to look just like them, like with the fake boobs and Botox.

First, the magazines like Seventeen and Elle used to make their models’ bodies very asymmetric with Photoshop to make them look “good”. Here’s former Cosmopolitan editor Leah Hardy’s point of view: “They had 22-inch waists (those were never made bigger), but they also had breasts and great skin,” she told the Daily Mail. “They had teeny tiny ankles and thin thighs, but they still had luscious hair and full cheeks. Thanks to retouching, our readers never saw the horrible, hungry downside of skinny. The models’ skeletal bodies, dull, thinning hair, spots and dark circles under their eyes were magicked away by technology … A vision of perfection that simply didn’t exist.” (Channel 4)

Another example is those mascara commercials. These do not include Photoshop but there’s a certain something these artists use. The models actually wear fake eyelashes to accentuate the “volume” and “length” of the lashes. If you look VERY closely, there is a disclaimer that states: ‘Lash inserts were applied to both of Nicole’s lashes to add lash count before applying mascara’. (Daily Mail) This was on CoverGirl’s LashBlast Volume Mascara on the model Nicole Fox.

The next reason why magazines should stop retouching models is that most females get influenced by this type of nonsense .This is why 95% of us teens 12 to 25 have eating disorders, such as bulimia and anorexia. (SCDMH) Unbelievable, right? Teen Vogue, a popular teen magazine, got a new online petition from Spark, a group made by 14-year-old Julia Bluhm against photoshopping in all magazines, said to Seventeen and Teen Vogue, “Teen girl-targeting magazines bombard young women with images that have been distorted and digitally altered with programs including Photoshop. These photoshopped images are extremely dangerous to girls like us who read them, because they keep telling us: you are not skinny enough, pretty enough or perfect enough.”(TheFrisky) This is very true, compared to what these magazines show us.

Lastly, these magazines give us a rendition of how each girl should look like. Really? These models are like Barbie dolls, and we expect to look like them? This is exactly why it’s nonsense. Like the quote I referred to in the first paragraph, they have disproportional bodies. They are very “biologically inappropriate” (Channel 4). Eating disorders overcome these victims of looking and following what the magazines portray as the “perfect body”.

So to sum it up, photoshopping models make people deceived in our body image and us humans feel insecure and misguided. And maybe, one day, we could be proud of how we look and not just follow after what some magazines tell us.

Bibliography

Gerstein, Julie. “First Seventeen, Now Teen Vogue, Next The World?” The Frisky. July 6, 2012. Web. November 20, 2012.

Crisell, Hattie. “Why It’s Time to Stop the Airbrushing.” Channel 4. n.d. Web. November 20, 2012.

Abraham, Tamara. “CoverGirl Admits to Using False Lashes in Ad for ‘false lash effect’ mascara.” Daily Mail. June 1, 2011. Web. November 20, 2012.