An old familiar tune, but I’ll sing it for you again:
It’s hard enough to deal with tall, willowy, perfectly toned, smooth-skinned women as our primary paragons of beauty. To then Photoshop the living daylights out of these naturally slender, glowing, practically flawless creatures before plopping them onto our magazine covers merely aggravates our suspicion that we can NEVER be as thin or beautiful as we should.
But what the hell can we do about it? We can write in to the editors. We can write out to our communities. We can gripe and shake our fists. We can boycott. But it never seems to have an impact. Wrinkle-and-blemish-free, armfatless, taut-skinned, thinner-than-humanly-possible celebs continue to stare hollowly at us from the newsstand, whispering, “See? I’m gorgeous and perfect and it wasn’t enough. They had to retouch ME. Oh girl, you’ll never catch up.”
And why don’t our efforts have an impact? Because arguing with corporations is more successful when you can make a case that change will be LUCRATIVE.
Blogger Clare Ondrey has figured this out. Via online changemaker The Point, she has created a challenge to women’s magazines that includes a financial incentive: If they give us an issue with Photoshop-free features and cover, we’ll buy TWO issues apiece. It wouldn’t necessarily double monthly sales, but it’d sure give them a hefty boost. And since this mini-campaign has already caught the attention of multitudinous high-profile sites, including Jezebel, word of its existence might even travel to the right ears.
Click here to join the campaign. I did. And maybe it won’t have any more impact than the various other online petitions I’ve signed. But money talks, so maybe it will.
![[Valid RSS]](wp-content/themes/thesis_18/custom/images/valid-rss-rogers.png "Validate my RSS feed")
{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
I discussed this particular cover a few months ago, and everyone agreed it was a particularly surreal incident of Photoshopping.
I like the idea of this campaign, and would like to join. I wonder if the issue isn’t on a much grander scale, though, like one that involves the cover model’s ego, or the designers idea of the ideal model who would wear his/her clothes, etc.
@Sally – Thank you so much for writing about this campaign. It makes me so happy to hear that other people feel the same way I do about this issue.
I love that you picked up on the money incentive – you get more bees with honey, right? That’s what I’m shooting for.
@enc – Please do join! I’m going to start reaching out to magazines once we hit 1000 people (pretty soon by the looks of things) and I want to engage them in a public discussion about concerns like yours.
Hopefully there’s a celebrity, a designer and a magazine brave enough to try.
First off: I like your blog Sally, but usually do not comment
. Now to what I had to add: I am somewhat skeptical of this campaign. Most of the fashion in magazines is just as surreal as the photoshopped models. I agree that the ideal model is out of reach for a normal person, but so is couture, but do I want to ban/avoid that as well? I admit that I generally do not buy any fashion magazines (even though I am interested in clothing). If you look at Vogue it is full of ads for unaffordable items, which tends to annoy me. They sell an image of unattainability – the perfect body – essentially to get people to spend a large sum to be connected to that beauty ideal. If you cannot afford the advertised clothes, at least you may be able to buy the magazine. In the end you get to pay for a look at the advertisments, which companies pay the magazine for as well… If they’d have a real woman (probably a non-photoshopped celebrity) on the cover that would be only a publicity stunt, comparable to the Dove campaign. The latter also only works because it is aimed at the mass consumer, for a mainly cheap product and not a high-end brand. So I’ll just not buy the magazines, even if they’d photoshop less. The public ideal of beauty will change on it’s own – women no longer wear corsets (unless they want to) either.
enc: I agree that the root of the problem isn’t the Photoshopping choices of magazines or their art directors. There is so much more at play, and something like this will not eradicate or reverse any larger problems we see with ideals of beauty. But I think that any small thing we can do to to show an industry that feeds those warped ideals that we’d rather see something more natural, healthier, and less extreme may help. I think that many small actions, and attacking a problem from multiple angles simultaneously, can be effective over time.
Clare: You bet! Glad to have found out about what you’re doing.
Mona: Thanks for coming out of the woodwork to voice your opinion on this issue! Hope you’ll do so as often as you feel comfortable.
I hear what you’re saying about fashion magazines showcasing expensive clothes and unattainable bodies TOGETHER as a means to create artificial want for the products. And I agree that this would likely be a one-shot deal, getting a major mag to put an unretouched gal on the cover.
But personally, I don’t believe that the generally-held ideal of beauty will change on its own, naturally and over time. One can argue that media vs. public influence over what is deemed beautiful is a chicken/egg situation – that you can’t blame the media for simply giving the public what it demands, and you can’t blame the public because it’s being manipulated by the media. So I won’t even address the CAUSE of the current state of body image weirdness. But what would give anyone any reason to shift the paradigm if there isn’t a dialog? If we don’t speak up? If we don’t say, “Hey, it’s not cool to define exemplary beauty as ONLY tall, thin, and big-boobed,” closely followed by, “Hey, it’s not cool to Photoshop the living hell out of those already spectacular specimens of ladyhood, thereby making normal girls feel even more inferior,” how would anyone fueling that fire with images and editorial know that we’re disgruntled? And why would they change anything at all?
This may be small, and hells, it may not have any effect whatsoever. But as I said in response to enc, I feel like the accumulation of small actions truly can impact the world. What we think and what we say to each other makes a difference. And since, like it or not, magazines contribute to body image and self-worth issues for many, many women, I’m going to put my name out there with the rest on this one.
Well I have stopped buying magazines, and as I have stopped having haircuts, I have stopped reading them too. But I will do this for the sake of my nieces and any other young girl who is yearning to be the “ideal” but not realising that the “ideal” doesnt exist.
Because that is the problem. We might be clever clogs and read witty and intelligent blogs like your’s and enc.’s but my 19 year old babysitter who has an eating disorder does not. She is too busy studying and just wants to flick through fash mags to look at fashion.
So when she turns up looking like a broomstick in a sweater; we have to examine the wider issue of impossible role model.
As for getting rid of corsets? That took extreme radicalism on the part of women who were awakening politically in so many other ways.
Suffragette Sal!
xx
I intend to girlcott Vogue because I’m simply fed up with it. But I’ll definitely check out the site you cite.
Great idea. And nowadays all of that retouching doesn’t even look real. They mags should knpw they aren’t fooling anyone; just hurting female self-worth.
HA, i would LOVE to see an un-photoshopped issue. would that include the advertisements too though? that would never happen.
i have such a love/hate relationship with magazines, but i have a purely “hate” relationship with photoshop.
an intriguing campaign. I suppose I don’t feel that strongly about this, although really obvious photoshopping of someone like Drew Barrymore whose uniqueness and ‘realness’ were always things I loved about her makes me sad. it’s funny because seeing so many photoshopped images sort of trains you to be nit-picky. I saw an ad in some sort of teen magazine where the model’s face was clearly NOT photoshopped, and I found myself being all snarky about it, then stopping myself. I’m not sure this is the answer, but I do think whether it will change things or not it’s a good idea. Changes in standards of beauty and other political or cultural norms tend to happen in slow spurts, but the fringes must keep at work! I really enjoyed reading all the opinions of your readers too!