Your thoughts on this?

oftheherd said:
My world has just come to an end. 😛
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I was visiting my wife's uncle several years ago in north Queensland ... he was a very successful mango farmer who dealt at the uper end of the market. Bowen mangos fetch several dollars each in your average supermarket!

We were in the packing shed where fruit was being sorted and boxed and off to the side there were trays of mangos that the supermarkets wouldn't take because they had very small blemishes on the skins ... you could buy a tray of these direct from him for five or ten dollars. The others without the blemishes fetched up to forty dollars a tray wholesale!

The fruit inside was identical in every way ... these tiny brown spots on the skins couldn't be photo shopped out unfortunately! 😛
 
I'm going to walk off a cliff here.

I don't like heavily PP'ed beauty photos. But...a lot of people, primarily women, do. Those in the US might remember the "Glamour Shots" fad. It was before PP was heavily used, so they achieved this look by slathering on tons of makeup and using lighting to make women look, well...featureless. More like they had been made up by an undertaker. Women flocked to these franchises. You can spot one of these photos immediately. Both my wife and sister did the Glamour Shots thing. Now, they look back at the photos a laugh at themselves.

I've been shooting, pro bono, head shots for a local theater group for years. Typical headshot look. But several years ago the women wanted me to begin retouching their photos to make them look like those "fashion photos." I bought Portrait Professional software. You can make them look completely plastic with the software (it really is good software, if used with restraint). They love to look plastic. Flawless, perfect, no wrinkles, pore less skin. Overly lightened.

I agree that, just like the Glamour Shots fad, this look will one day look terribly dated. But if you are in business, you give folks what they want.
 
Portrait Professional anyone?

http://www.portraitprofessional.com/?gclid=CLvsydPRgqgCFcod4QodPjPhrg

Whilst I have no great issue with people wanting a few blemishes removed or to look slightly better looking than we actually are, vanity is usually within us to some degree, this kind of thing becomes overused & abused and when done so by an industry we can get ourselves into the kind of mess that can affect so many young women, more worryingly girls of a disturbingly young age and even young men.

Though I would like to make clear that I'm not placing all these ills at the door of the chap who took the photos originally linked to!
 
I'm probably going to get slammed for saying the following but I'm going to say it anyway - political correctness is bull***t anyway:

I don't really see a problem with getting beautiful girls to model for product shots, or using makeup to get their skin perfect or lighting to even out perfections. Everyone is in a current media spoon-fed fad when they think that if a model is skinny or fit that 'normal' women can't possibly hope to look like them because women come in 'all shapes and sizes' blah blah blah. Wrong. This has happened because nearly everybody has a bad diet, and nearly everybody doesn't exercise, so they take their anger out on people who do. This is why cancer, diabetes, heart disease and osteoporosis are higher than ever in history.

The 'correct' female body in terms of physical health is slim and fit, with low body fat. 'Real women' as everyone likes to call them, or plus sized models are mostly just overweight due to bad diet, and bad skin is also largely a diet based issue in most people. I'm not saying people of all sizes aren't individually beautiful - because I DO believe that everyone is beautiful, but ideal physical shape and condition is very simple - a person with low bodyfat, high muscle mass and a good diet will be healthier than an overweight person every single time. They'll live longer, feel better about themselves, have significantly less health issues along the way etc etc.

The other thing is that the natural instinct of sex drive for BOTH males and females correlates directly to physical attraction. Every single species of every single animal on earth has evolved the way that is has because of natural selective breeding. The male will always go for the most physically attractive and healthy female, the female will always go for the most physically attractive and healthy female. This is the exact same in humans, and it will always be this way. It's a natural thing to favor aesthetically beautiful people.

So why, as a company, would I use an overweight girl with inconsistent skin (blotchy imperfections etc) to sell a product, when I could find the top percentage of women that actively condition themselves physically to have good skin, to be fit and in shape to sell that same product? In the case of Beauty campaigns - the product is usually makeup. So obviously the girl has to have good skin, and they're going to do everything in their power to achieve a high level of consistency in her skin - including makeup, lighting and PP. If they simply used a model with pimples and blotches and random black hairs it wouldn't sell makeup. Why? Because it goes back to the natural instinct thing. Women know men like fit girls, and Men know women like fit men, so they're likely to buy the products that best achieve the optimum condition.
They moment they put overweight and unhealthy people in product advertisement is the day I know society has lost the plot. I sure as hell wouldn't want my children to look up to an overweight man or woman, after going what I've been through.


Note: I'm not saying the original pictures are the epitome of ethics or beauty - yes I think they're overdone in terms of skin PP. Truth is the comments in here worry me way more than the pictures.
 
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Chris101 said:
Sure for Avedon, Newton, et. al., but for every digi-shooter with a 24-70 zoom and a couple of alien-bees? It's useful commercially, but hobbyists shooting this skin-smoothed, eye-sharpened, it's not art, it's practice.

And if it's fashion, what is she presenting, the make-up? Cause that's all she's (apparently) wearing. Isn't fashion about a product?
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Fashion is very much aesthetic based. Aesthetics = art (for me at least). It's not just a learned skill to take good beauty shots or fashion editorials - otherwise it wouldn't be one of the most competitive photography markets in the world, with only the very very top percentage of photographers actually getting constant high level jobs in it.
 
Appearances seriously don't mean a lot to me regarding attraction to the opposite sex. An average looking woman with intelect and drive will attract me far more than a physically perfect individual every time.

I guess that's why I instintively distrust these perfect specimens ... be they in magazines or wherever. Who was it who said a good coat of paint can hide a multitude of sins! 😀
 
fdigital said:
The 'correct' female body in terms of physical health is slim and fit, with low body fat. 'Real women' as everyone likes to call them, or plus sized models are mostly just overweight due to bad diet, and bad skin is also largely a diet based issue in most people. I'm not saying people of all sizes aren't individually beautiful - because I DO believe that everyone is beautiful, but ideal physical shape and condition is very simple - a person with low bodyfat, high muscle mass and a good diet will be healthier than an overweight person every single time. They'll live longer, feel better about themselves, have significantly less health issues along the way etc etc.

The other thing is that the natural instinct of sex drive for BOTH males and females correlates directly to physical attraction. Every single species of every single animal on earth has evolved the way that is has because of natural selective breeding. The male will always go for the most physically attractive and healthy female, the female will always go for the most physically attractive and healthy female. This is the exact same in humans, and it will always be this way. It's a natural thing to favor aesthetically beautiful people.

So why, as a company, would I use an overweight girl with inconsistent skin (blotchy imperfections etc) to sell a product, when I could find the top percentage of women that actively condition themselves physically to have good skin, to be fit and in shape to sell that same product? In the case of Beauty campaigns - the product is usually makeup. So obviously the girl has to have good skin, and they're going to do everything in their power to achieve a high level of consistency in her skin - including makeup, lighting and PP. If they simply used a model with pimples and blotches and random black hairs it wouldn't sell makeup. Why? Because it goes back to the natural instinct thing. Women know men like fit girls, and Men know women like fit men, so they're likely to buy the products that best achieve the optimum condition.
They moment they put overweight and unhealthy people in product advertisement is the day I know society has lost the plot. I sure as hell wouldn't want my children to look up to an overweight man or woman, after going what I've been through.


Note: I'm not saying the original pictures are the epitome of ethics or beauty - yes I think they're overdone in terms of skin PP. Truth is the comments in here worry me way more than the pictures.
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I think you're arguing against a straw man here - as far as I can see, no one here is advocating putting overweight and unhealthy people in product ads. This is more about the cases where star designers fire models who are 5"8' and weigh 120lbs because they are deemed "too fat", while the photoshopped final picture looks like this:

article-1220397-06BFB58B000005DC-503_224x629.jpg


Given your biography it's quite understandable that you attach a certain importance to a healthy diet. However, there is no way you can look like that on any healthy diet. I don't think it's healthy for young girls to make this their ideal of physical beauty either. I have a hard time seeing any natural beauty in hips that are narrower than the head, but you find models engaging in dietary practices that are actually quite unhealthy just to adhere to this standard. Obsessing about things tends to be bad.

The natural sex drive may make it natural to favour aesthetically beautiful people, but please don't forget that values of beauty are largely culturally communicated. In fact this is why we have this discussion in the first place. I think it's quite appropriate to point out that something is wrong with the image of female beauty as communicated, for example, in Western fashion media at the moment - we've come to the point, in fact, where even the Western fashion media have realized that. Cancer, diabetes, heart diesease and osteoporosis (to take your examples) may be higher than ever in history, but, one can't help noticing that, for example, bulimia and anorexia nervosa are also more widespread than ever. Those have nothing to do with natural sex drive and the 'correct' female body in terms of physical health, but everything with a distorted image of the self and a self-obliterating drive to conform with a wildly unnatural ideal of the body, and you don't have to be an advocate overweight models to notice that.
 
JSU said:
Beauty is only skin deep...so is marketing.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYhCn0jf46U
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I have seen this one before. So true. But those who actually are able to realize how particular and interesting that face is before the makeup artists did their job can not be surprised by the result. It is that expression that can be polished and magnified that allows the final impression. Faces which have nothing written on tend to remain to look about the same and become just a screen for painters (although often technically attractive). Age magnifies these differences. Many of the faces in the advertising belong to the second category IMO.

But still - we can no deny the power of makeup and styling - most of us married guys must admit that as beautiful as we see our loving wives - we all dropped jaws once we saw them as brides on the day D. I know I did 🙂
 
rxmd said:
I think you're arguing against a straw man here - as far as I can see, no one here is advocating putting overweight and unhealthy people in product ads. This is more about the cases where star designers fire models who are 5"8' and weigh 120lbs because they are deemed "too fat", while the photoshopped final picture looks like this:

article-1220397-06BFB58B000005DC-503_224x629.jpg


Given your biography it's quite understandable that you attach a certain importance to a healthy diet. However, there is no way you can look like that on any healthy diet. I don't think it's healthy for young girls to make this their ideal of physical beauty either. I have a hard time seeing any natural beauty in hips that are narrower than the head, but you find models engaging in dietary practices that are actually quite unhealthy just to adhere to this standard. Obsessing about things tends to be bad.

The natural sex drive may make it natural to favour aesthetically beautiful people, but please don't forget that values of beauty are largely culturally communicated. In fact this is why we have this discussion in the first place. I think it's quite appropriate to point out that something is wrong with the image of female beauty as communicated, for example, in Western fashion media at the moment - we've come to the point, in fact, where even the Western fashion media have realized that. Cancer, diabetes, heart diesease and osteoporosis (to take your examples) may be higher than ever in history, but, one can't help noticing that, for example, bulimia and anorexia nervosa are also more widespread than ever. Those have nothing to do with natural sex drive and the 'correct' female body in terms of physical health, but everything with a distorted image of the self and a self-obliterating drive to conform with a wildly unnatural ideal of the body, and you don't have to be an advocate overweight models to notice that.
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The girl in that picture is underweight and thus has the same ill health as a girl that is overweight. I don't advocate that at all. She's obviously also been artificially slimmed -eg in photoshop, because the proportions and fat percentage of her head and shoulders to her waist and legs are completely wrong - which doesn't really happen naturally.
The girl in the original post is probably close to, if not the ideal weight for her body type.

The problem for me, is that I have probably 200-300 fashion magazines from all over the world in my bookcase - both independent magazines and some of the highest circulation magazines. Each one has a picture of a model on every page. Not one of those magazines features an underweight model in the same style that you posted. Such a thing is a major exception, not the rule.

Distorted body image should not be caused by healthy and fit models. Distorted body image most likely comes from other issues in the girls personal life which might have influenced them to do what they do. If an anorexic is starving themselves on purpose and is woefully underweight, there is obviously something seriously wrong in her perceptions of what is normal and healthy. I don't understand how the fashion industry is to blame for such a thing, instead I see parents and friends and schools wavering responsibility and blaming someone else, like humans always do.


A lot of what I see in this anti-fashion thing currently going on is a) scapegoating and b) lack of knowledge of what fashion photography actually is.
 
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This woman certainly didn't do much for the cause of a healthy body image ... along with Calvin Klein's help of course!


kate_moss_obsession.jpg
 
Griffin said:
Who here lets the media "teach" their children?
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If we don't monitor and moderate what they watch or listen to, we all do. Actually, even if we do moderate, we are still letting media "teach" our children. It is just a question of what we want taught.
 
Keith said:
This woman certainly didn't do much for the cause of a healthy body image ... along with Calvin Klein's help of course!


kate_moss_obsession.jpg
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Ahh yes the posterchild for the media's obsession with models being bad role models. Despite kates awkward pose and the bad lighting in the photo, I wouldn't say she is unhealthily underweight there, or possibly even underweight at all. Currently being 165ish cm in height and 51kg in weight, she falls within a healthy range on a BMI. She has been skinnier before, but the main bulk of her work has been in her healthier state.
IE: I don't see why she's considered to be such a bad role model, when this is currently happening:

http://www.health.gov.au/internet/healthyactive/publishing.nsf/Content/overweight-obesity

"Results from this survey reveal that in 2007-08, 61.4% of the Australian population are either overweight or obese1."

And even more concerning:

"For children and adolescents, the 2007-08 National Health Survey results indicate that 24.9% of children aged 5 – 17 years are overweight or obese.
25.8% of boys and 24.0% of girls are either overweight or obese."

For comparison, "It is estimated that anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa affect 0.5% and 0.5%-1% of the Australian population respectively"
(source: http://www.womhealth.org.au/studentfactsheets/eatingdisorders.htm)

So basically 61.4% of the Australian population is overweight or obese compared to 0.5-1% of of the Australian population with anorexia/bulimia. Maybe it's the Moms and Dads, Grandpas and Grandmas of Australia and the rest of the world who are the bad role models...
 
I am enjoying this thread, because it's interesting to hear RFF-ers trying to get what's really going on behind an image.

It's a complicated question. The OP images are for me mildly interesting on a technical level (I wouldn't know how to light like that), but they are clearly commercial images. Is the photographer trying to reveal something about this woman, or about his relationship to her? No, it's all about creating a surface, an illusion.

Is this illusion evil? -- does it cause negative effects on how people think or live? A difficult question. Philosophers and theorists have written many books about it.

Personally I try to limit my children's exposure to this kind of image, and try to provide them with alternate types of images they wouldn't encounter in commercial media.

But I don't believe one photographer's attaempts to embody commercial ideals of female beauty is in any way morally suspect. Uninteresting, yes. But not immoral.
 
I would gladly show you a few examples of natural female beauty, but my wife would kill me :angel: Hey! have yet to develop that Delta 3200 😀

On the serious side - I am quite positively surprised that most of the models in the local (german) OTTO everyday fashion magazine (catalogue actually) have actually very natural curves (not average figures indeed). Otto probably can not afford to pay skinny pro models 😛
 
Women during child bearing years are NOT supposed to be slim with low body fat. Who ever gave you that idea? It's idiotic.

On these panic-stats about the percentage of the population that is overweight (I won't argue obese except in so far as the base numbers are wrong) use a measure for height / weight that is not applicable to many body types. When I was 21 I weighed three pounds more than the max weight for my height by government / insurance company statistics -- the only time I've been that close. And I had a 31-inch waist. I would certainly like to have it back .... have any of you found it? I'll send you my address and pay shipping. Anyway I have thick legs and thick arms and thick hands and a size 18 neck and big shoulders so who are they talking about?

That said, I live in NYC, and when you leave the big town and go out into America proper people are so fat its scary. This is not because they're bad people with bad habits. We subsidize their bad diets with big payments to corn farmers: everything we eat has high fructose corn syrup in it: and big payments to highway builders so we drive everywhere, etc. My girlfriend and I eat vegetarian and organic low starch diets (and yeah, I'm still way overweight) and among other problems, such as finding the good food, there is the price. We spend triple on food what we ought to for a family our size (one child). One head of organic broccoli is $4.99. One super-size bag of Doritos is $1.99. I saw a girl outside the Bronx Zoo yesterday talking to someone on her mobile phone and she was saying "I had two bags of chips and a bottle of Arizona for lunch"-- now you can condemn her (she was petite, by the way) but first live in the South Bronx for a while and figure out where to obtain healthy cheap food.

Finally: Fashion, PP, lighting, I don't care: those pictures suck, they make the girl look like a freak, and lend zero appeal to anything they might want to advertise. Look at the fashion photography -- not the ads, but the photography -- in the high end fashion magazines. Even now. It's largely very interesting work. And back in the day, such as in Harper's Bazaar in the 1950s and 60s under the guidance of Alexi Brodovitch (Avedon, Penn, and many others worked for him) you would have seen great photography often at the level of art.

But that stuff sucks. Have I said it enough? It sucks.

Vince
 
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