Literature Review
Many researchers, as well as people in the past century have come to a conclusion that women of all races in magazines or social media have a negative impact physically and emotionally. When females first look at magazines or pictures of models, they know that that picture has been altered or played with to make the female appear more “socially acceptable”, but what they do not know is how much it’s been changed. Making them believe that most of the image they are looking at is real or unchanged causing a distorted idea of what is normal. With advances in technology, there are many types of software such as Photoshop that create these fictional female characters rather than the real reflection of a female, and who’s to suffer again, females you say? Indeed it is. A study conducted in 2004 showed that 36% of women were dissatisfied with their body weight and shape. (Etcoff, Orbach, Scott, and D’Agostino, 2004) That was a study done in 2004, and the results of what is occurring recently is way worse than just being dissatisfying. In 2012 there were 130,502 plastic surgery procedures done for teenagers under the age of 18 in the United States, just to become that model on the cover of their favorite magazine. (Gandhi, K., 2013). Photoshop is causing young adults and little girls to feel as if they are ugly and causing them to a low self-esteem, this is only one of many ways that shows how Photoshop affects females.
Story Behind Photoshop
Photoshop was first released in 1990 but was publicly known in 2000 (Mahesh, 2011) created by Thomas and John Knoll. Due to Thomas Knoll’s Mac Plus failing to display grayscale images on its 1-bit black and white display, in which he later began coding a program that could solve the problem, which was Photoshop 1.0. Many companies decided not to accept their work until September 1988 where a deal was put in place between Adobe and the Noll brothers. Now Photoshop has come such a long way that the primary resource to go to when editing photos is Photoshop. It is not just editing on a filter, it’s causing deformed images that are far from the original, just like the definition of Photoshop in Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary. Photoshop is to alter (a digital image) with Photoshop software or other image-editing software especially in a way that distorts reality (as for deliberately deceptive purposes).
Media Influences
How often do you see curvy women in the media? Not often enough! Due to women being represented as extremely skinny, this leads to negative consequences in females. Supporting this is Andy Cowles, an art director for Rolling Stone’s, “It’s not immoral to retouch people, and everyone does it, the difficulty is, when you mess with the truth, when it’s distorted and done to the point where you can see it and the person doesn’t look real.” (Freydkin, D., 2003) Yes, the meaning beauty has changed due to society and consequences are more than real.. “In fact, several studies have shown that reading women's fashion magazines or looking at images of models has a negative effect on women's and girls' self-esteem.”(Filucci, S., 2014) Do we have to go to the point where all we want is a distorted figure of ourselves to be called “beautiful?”
Too skinny
Not only are many editors in magazines creating unrealistic skinny pictures of celebrities, but some editors have even admitted to adding a few pounds onto the model for being “frighteningly thin”.(Hardy., 2014) They try to make the cheeks appear fuller, and make the stomach more natural looking. Not only are these magazines saying that the models are too fat, now they are saying they’re too skinny as well. This severely messes with the females reading these magazines, but the editor of cosmopolitan couldn’t have said it better, “We also felt they were bad role models and it would be irresponsible to show them as they really are.”(Hardy, L., 2014) but it is also irresponsible not to show how they really are instead of telling females they have the perfect bodies. They are basically saying you have to be a very specific weight; you can’t be “too skinny’ or “too fat”.
We believe that media is obsessed with being skinny, instead of trying to create images that are realistic. They need to show us the real models, not fake bodies, because of this, many females, varying from 10 year olds to adults feel discontent with their bodies. 80% of women felt images of female stars made them feel insecure. 91% of women are unhappy with their bodies and turn to diet pills, 73% of these women abuse the diet pill. Four out of five women in the U.S do not like their bodies, they believe they should look like the pictures in those magazines. But only 5% percent in the U.S population actually possesses the body portrayed in the media.
Story Behind Photoshop
Photoshop was first released in 1990 but was publicly known in 2000 (Mahesh, 2011) created by Thomas and John Knoll. Due to Thomas Knoll’s Mac Plus failing to display grayscale images on its 1-bit black and white display, in which he later began coding a program that could solve the problem, which was Photoshop 1.0. Many companies decided not to accept their work until September 1988 where a deal was put in place between Adobe and the Noll brothers. Now Photoshop has come such a long way that the primary resource to go to when editing photos is Photoshop. It is not just editing on a filter, it’s causing deformed images that are far from the original, just like the definition of Photoshop in Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary. Photoshop is to alter (a digital image) with Photoshop software or other image-editing software especially in a way that distorts reality (as for deliberately deceptive purposes).
Media Influences
How often do you see curvy women in the media? Not often enough! Due to women being represented as extremely skinny, this leads to negative consequences in females. Supporting this is Andy Cowles, an art director for Rolling Stone’s, “It’s not immoral to retouch people, and everyone does it, the difficulty is, when you mess with the truth, when it’s distorted and done to the point where you can see it and the person doesn’t look real.” (Freydkin, D., 2003) Yes, the meaning beauty has changed due to society and consequences are more than real.. “In fact, several studies have shown that reading women's fashion magazines or looking at images of models has a negative effect on women's and girls' self-esteem.”(Filucci, S., 2014) Do we have to go to the point where all we want is a distorted figure of ourselves to be called “beautiful?”
Too skinny
Not only are many editors in magazines creating unrealistic skinny pictures of celebrities, but some editors have even admitted to adding a few pounds onto the model for being “frighteningly thin”.(Hardy., 2014) They try to make the cheeks appear fuller, and make the stomach more natural looking. Not only are these magazines saying that the models are too fat, now they are saying they’re too skinny as well. This severely messes with the females reading these magazines, but the editor of cosmopolitan couldn’t have said it better, “We also felt they were bad role models and it would be irresponsible to show them as they really are.”(Hardy, L., 2014) but it is also irresponsible not to show how they really are instead of telling females they have the perfect bodies. They are basically saying you have to be a very specific weight; you can’t be “too skinny’ or “too fat”.
We believe that media is obsessed with being skinny, instead of trying to create images that are realistic. They need to show us the real models, not fake bodies, because of this, many females, varying from 10 year olds to adults feel discontent with their bodies. 80% of women felt images of female stars made them feel insecure. 91% of women are unhappy with their bodies and turn to diet pills, 73% of these women abuse the diet pill. Four out of five women in the U.S do not like their bodies, they believe they should look like the pictures in those magazines. But only 5% percent in the U.S population actually possesses the body portrayed in the media.