Unretouched Photos: Empowering or Just More ‘Empower-tainment’?
April 20, 2010 by Melanie Klein · 60 Comments
Recently, there have been a few high-profile examples of magazines publishing images of “real” women: plus-sized models, or celebrities free of makeup and/or Photoshop. The ensuing publicity can make it feel that we’ve won body image victories–but let’s look closer at these images to find out how much we should really be celebrating.
February 2009: Love Magazine‘s first magazine cover features a nude Beth Ditto.
April 2009: French Elle’s no make-up edition features eight European models without make-up or digital touch ups.
September 2009: Glamour Magazine features “the woman on p.194” with a belly roll (and a smile).
January 2010: V Magazine‘s plus-size model spread, clothed and nude.
February 2010: Australian Marie Claire puts Miss Universe 2004, Jennifer Hawkins, on the cover nude and unaltered. A cover signed by Hawkins was auctioned on eBay, with proceeds donated to Australian eating-disorder support group The Butterfly Foundation.
March 2010: Tara Lynn graces the cover and the pages of French Elle’s “curvy girl” issue.
April 2010: French Marie Claire releases a non-airbrushed issue.
Just last week: Britney Spears releases unretouched photos alongside the altered images for her new Candies campaign.
A few days later, Kim Kardashian releases nude photos for the May 2010 issue of Harper’s Bazaar sans digital alteration (and felt so empowered that she tweeted about it).
I’ll admit that I’ve gotten excited about more than a few of these body-image events, and looking at this list it would appear that there’s some real positive change occurring. But after news of Kate Hudson’s alleged breast enhancement made headlines less than 48 hours after Britney Spears released her unretouched photos, I had to ask, Do these efforts matter? Can these images combat the images below?
Yes, unadulterated images matter, but their impact is diluted by the millions of adulterated ones. As consumers we are exposed [PDF] to hundreds of advertisements per day that overwhelmingly feature unnaturally (or genetically predisposed) thin women who have been further retouched. Waists are made smaller, torsos and legs are elongated and thinned, thighs smoothed and armpits all-but-disappeared.
In this context, the occasional plus-size model appears deeply incongruous: a spectacle, not a part of a spectrum.
In the cases of Spears and Kardashian, featuring striking women without airbrushing isn’t exactly revolutionary–and some speculate whether these images are actually all they claim to be. Kardashian’s body, at least, comes pre-altered by cellulite removal. These photographs set a new unattainable standard, this one for “real” bodies. Plus, both Spears and Kardashian have published countless altered photographs of themselves, and Kardashian hawks diet pills as a side job.
Without an authentic and consistent message of beauty empowerment in all its diversity, these attempts feel like gimmicks, or what Samantha Moore of Gender Across Borders calls “empower-tainment“:
It’s going to take more than a celebrity proclamation that my “unique” qualities are beautiful, despite what popular media—and the male gaze driving it—say. Because beauty standards are socially constructed, redefining what “beauty” means is a hairy, multifaceted venture that must consider entrenched social forces. Powerful influences such as patriarchy, historical context, consumerism, and media are embedded in the fabric of almost every society. While boosting women’s self-confidence is peachy, it cannot be a successful driver of social change. What we really need to contest is the beauty myth—the illusion that female beauty standards are natural, inevitable, and backed by some concrete “truth” about optimum femininity.
Images that fall outside the limiting standard can’t produce change when millions of taken-for-granted images constantly cultivate our expectations and solidify the standard. Publishing unadulterated images every so often, with great fanfare, does not successfully challenge the normative Eurocentric image of ideal beauty, which includes vast amounts of alteration. Rather than promoting real change and creating a critical dialogue that explores the creation and maintenance of unrealistic, confining and, often, dangerous images of beauty, the announcement of these unaltered photos can easily become a spectacle designed for publicity and ratings.
TOP:Tara Lynn in “curvy girl” issue of French Elle. BOTTOM: Collages by Nasser Samara.
Susan Duganne
WS 01 – Online Participation #3
Unretouched Photos: Empowering or Just More ‘Empower-tainment’
http://bit.ly/bJ7739
April 20, 2010 by Melanie Klein
As far as I can see, nothing has changed. A few magazines use “Plus Size” women’s photos in a couple of their monthly issues as exampled below:
Monday, 08/17/2009 12:15 PM
On the C.L.: by Cindi Leive the Editor-in-Chief of Glamour magazine. Re: ‘The Picture You Can’t Stop Talking About: Meet “the Woman on p. 194″, 20-year-old model Lizzi Miller. It’s a photo that measures all of three by three inches in our September issue, but the letters about it started to flood my inbox literally the day Glamour hit newsstands.’
During the aforementioned, both Cindi & Lizzi appeared on the Today Show, interviewed by Matt Lauer, talking about why images like “the Woman on p. 194,” are startling but important. All the hoopla turned out to be for not. Ms Leive stated in that interview that because of the overwhelming popularity and positive feedback she received from women around the globe about Lizzi’s photo, Glamour would be utilizing plus-size models for future photo shoots, because Glamour listens to their subscribers.
That was in September 2009, over two years ago, yet nothing has changed, just a few token plus-size photo spreads have appeared since. The majority of the photo spreads continue to feature ultra thin models with faces made-up to the hilt, and final photos completely retouched – there is nothing real about any of these shots. These women look completely emaciated. There is nothing pretty or sexy about them. And even if they were, aren’t all of us who buy Glamour, or others magazines like it, contributing to the advertisers/promoters vision of what is sexy and pretty thereby helping to perpetuate the continuum? And what happened to all those everyday women who voiced their opinion by letter/email/phone to Glamour, applauding the natural “real” woman photo? What happened to Ms Leive’s statement on the Today Show when she said ‘we listen to our reader’s, and in the future Glamour will continue to use women like Lizzi?’ What happened between that interview and now that no changes have been made? Who’s pulling the strings? And why do we, the reader’s, continue to support these magazines? Oh, and one other thought, aside from everything stated above, let’s not forget the ‘natural’ photo was taken in the buff as were many of the other shots taken of plus-size models. What exactly are these magazines suppose to be selling? Are these photos the new season’s spring or fall “fashions?”
How can we then, as the “real” thing, reverse the normative Eurocentric image of ideal beauty? I am disturbed to even consider that the unadulterated images that have recently appeared in the media may have more to do with publicity and ratings than an actual step towards change. It takes a strong person to realize that the images we see in the media today are not real. These altered images are simply the media playing to our weaknesses and we know this … so why do we continue to give the media so much strength? We as individuals can make our own steps towards erasing the mythical norm by taking back the strength we have given up, not to mention the dollars we spend while doing so. My first step will be to completely accept myself by erasing the feelings of inferiorty that I am blasted with every time I encounter someone who I think is better than I am. Easier said than done, I am quite sure of that, but I have nothing to lose and plenty to gain by at least giving it a try.
I’m glad that there are these celebrities that can show us at least ONE picture of their imperfect body. But we rarely see this. There’s no shame in showing how you really look. We’re human and humans are NOT perfect. Why is it that the media wants people to believe there is such a thing like a “perfect” body? Every picture in magazines are some how altered and have been photoshop. There is no more NATURAL beauty in this society. And that’s a shame.
Just because we see a few photos of real women’s bodies does not mean we are headed towards a change. First of all, how do we know that that was really an unretouche photo of Kim Kardashian? I deem that she looks “too perfect” for that photo to be unretouched. And who knows, maybe indeed these celebrities did that merely for publicity, to get attention or to gain more respect from people and their role models. In this world, everything is about making money so I highly doubt that media would post pictures of natural looking women only to do the “right thing” or to make “changes”, Media obviously know what sells and what brings a lot of attention. So indeed, at the end of the day it has to do with publicity. If it was to make changes, then we would have noticed it and seen more natural looking models in magazines. I am still waiting for that to happen.