There’s been quite a lot of buzz lately about the painfully obvious Photoshop work done on photos that have appeared in magazines and on the Internet. Whether it’s backlash to Target blatantly creating a model’s thigh gap or Lorde taking to Twitter to show fans the unedited version of her photos, people are becoming more aware of the media’s distortion of humans into their idealized version of beauty.
It’d be plausible to assume that with celebrities like Jennifer Lawrence going to award shows without makeup and models like Kate Upton “embracing a healthy body” the young ladies of our generation would be more willing to accept themselves as they appear in the mirror and in photos (shout out to all those “just woke up, no makeup” selfies). However, it seems that with the proliferation of social media networks comes more muploads and, consequently, a stronger desire to edit and filter each photo to “perfection.”
Cue the Perfect 365 app, which apparently can edit the crap out of your face. I’m talking the works: softening the face, adding eye shadow and rosy cheeks, widening the eyes and smile, whitening teeth, lifting cheeks, adding a wig (too obvious to actually use) and almost any other tweak you can think of.
When I first heard about this app, I thought it was something used to make ridiculous photos to laugh at and embarrass friends with on Facebook, but as I scroll through Instagram I am realizing it’s become more prevalent, and girls are using it to enhace themselves. Regardless of how subtle the editing is, even if it’s just a slight soften, you can’t help but notice the alteration once you pick up on their use of it.
My initial question was “why?” Yes, every girl wants to look her absolute best online, whether it’s to get a job after college or to impress the guy she hopes is Facebook-stalking her. But the girls I’ve noticed doing this are naturally attractive and don’t need any sort of editing to be seen that way.
What I’ve gathered, after years of coming across countless magazines and Internet articles about the use of Photoshop and photo manipulations, is that even the prettiest of people can be transformed into “perfect” through a computer. But is that what we want?
As humans, we are told many contradictory clichés about the word “perfect.” On one hand, it’s “practice makes perfect” and on the other we hear that “nobody’s perfect.” And while I believe the latter to be true, it seems as if we can get closer than ever before with apps like “Perfect 365” and people are getting on board with it.
I personally think the use of photo editing makes people look worse. It’s not attractive when someone’s face is altered to the point where it’s obviously not natural. That takes all of the appeal out of “a good picture.” The only app that even deserves bragging rights to personal photo editing is Instagram because its filters are cool and trendy, and although we may not always use it for those purposes at least all you’re doing is changing the lighting of a photo.
The scary and hilarious results our own Morgan Jenkins using the app
Where do we draw the line with photo editing? Why do we feel such a need to do it in the first place? As a society, we’ve accepted the fact that major magazines will Photoshop celebrities’ bodies to perfection and that Instagram is an acceptable form of filtering, but I fear a day when constant and heavy editing to all of our photos will become the norm.
My solution? If you don’t like the way you look in a photo, don’t upload it to your social networking sites. Remember: Just because you can change the way you look on someone’s feed doesn’t mean you can change the way you look in real life.
