Amuse me…

It is well known that there is a lot of airbrushing going on in magazine ads these days, and we have all heard the controversies regarding a real woman’s image and what is being put out by the media and the message it sends to young girls, however, in print ads–airbrushing and Photoshopping are pretty much a norm. The ad agencies aim for perfection–the perfect look, and of course since NO woman is perfect–therefore there is Photoshop –no big deal, right??  Photo retouching goes on everywhere there are photos–think of your own portraits… airbrushed and retouched ppl… All the cover models are retouched… even these wannabe models with photos on Facebook, Myspace and other photo sites are retouched.  It is a norm ppl–why trip?

This (left) was a tentative ad for Ralph Lauren that accidentally was leaked out and acquired by a blogger (who RL tried to sue for infringement of copyright–but really had no grounds), and became a public comment piece that put many in an uproar because the model (who is REALLY thin—but not THAT thin) was photoshopped to look fictionally thin.

I can understand all the uproar from those unversed in print norm, but I would also like to put out there in defense of advertisers and print mags that you all should KNOW that magazines airbrush, touch and retouch… nothing is what it seems–I don’t see how this is not known. For sure, models know this, advertisers know this, and now via some bad press, the public knows… perhaps this is a good thing! It is not real people.

However what IS REAL is that further reports say that RL actually fired Filippa for being “overweight’… whoa… have you seen her (below) (5’10″ & 120lbs)? You can tell by her photo (below) that she is not any where near “overweight”  (and I am a retired model who used to be one of these ultra-thin waifs ) …This firing is more something to be more interested in. Additionally, this is not an isolated incident, models get fired all the time for not being a particular weight and stature–or they don’t even get hired.

So Photoshop seriously FAILED in this instance…so what–knowledge is power people and if those that started this big ordeal were more educated–they would know that photoshopping is a norm in print ads… so what… so the photo looked FREAKISHLY unnatural–it WAS!! And most people could have looked at it and KNOWN it was Photoshopped!

So how about getting off this Photoshop ad appearance bandwagon and paying some attention to a more serious REAL issue… being fired for not being freakishly underweight! Let’s think about that one for a moment.

Smoochez…

AKA Paris E.

Tags: Filippa Hamilton, models, Paris Brown, Paris E, Paris E. Brown, Paris-ism, Photoshop, photoshopping models, Ralph Lauren

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 15th, 2009 at 9:37 am and is filed under Fashion/Modeling, Rants. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.