We’ve all got used to seeing airbrushed celebrities on the front of magazines and know they’ve been ‘touched up’ a bit but do we really understand how much they have been altered? Today I’ve been reading about a computer programme that could make the extent of alterations clearer to readers and as a result possibly encourage magazines to be a little more restrained when it comes to editing.
I don’t really have a problem with photoshopping out the odd spot and evening out skin tone but the changes seem to be getting more and more extreme. So many of them don’t even look that realistic, a bit ‘cartoony’ with strangely large bobble heads and Barbie sized waists. My personal favourite was the photo of Kourtney Kardashian one week after her son’s birth where they cut out literally half her body and replaced her entire head with an earlier thinner one. You can see it here. Bonkers, hey?
Research by the Computer Science Department at Dartmouth has developed a computer programme to analyse how much a photo has been altered. They also asked people to rate the amount of change between nearly 500 ‘before and after’ photos on a scale of one to five and used this to calibrate the results so that the programme expressed it’s results in a way that would be considered meaningful by your average reader. Basically it can spot all the small inconsistencies left by the editing and then give the photo a score out of 5 for ‘fakeness’. The full journal article is called ‘A Perceptual Metric for Photo Retouching‘ if you fancy going into more detail or if you just want to check out some more before and afters have a look here.
This is an interesting bit of research from a purely academic point of view but it could have a very practical application for these celebrity gossip type magazines and even advertising. The researchers are suggesting that they could be compelled to publish the score for each of their photos so all their readers would get an idea of how much work has been done on them. The idea being that if people were more aware of the extent of the changes then these pictures would not be having such a negative impact of the body image of young girls and we might see an improvement in things like eating disorders. A secondary benefit might be that magazines and advertisers would then choose to use less edited pictures as they wouldn’t want to be seen to be using ones with high scores.
I can’t imagine that this would be likely to happen without legislation and of course it would only go a small way to addressing the complicated issues around body image and eating disorders but I do think a reminder that these pictures aren’t real is a great idea.
What do you think? Would this type of score help or would it just be unnecessary nanny state interference? Do you think some advertisers and magazines might take it on voluntarily to improve their image? Maybe it should be compulsory for images targeting children and teens?
[Throughout April I’m taking part in the A to Z Challenge. This is my post for C. Yesterday I blogged about Balance and tomorrow it’s Daddy.]
i think that is a really good idea
and OMG that image of Kourtney whatsherface..why does anyone think that is okay? its beyond me really..what sort of message does that send to new mums!?
Crazy isn’t it and I thought she looked really pretty in the first one.
I think that it would be nice…especially for kids and teens materials. Too many young kids are developing eating disorders in an attempt to be normal in the way that the media portrays it.
Yep, I think teen magazines would be a good place to start. Thanks for popping by Tracy.
I’ve found a site that will give the folks in a picture facelifts and whiten their teeth. On a picture mind you.
dreamweaver
Ha ha, after moaning about photoshopping I’m still going to have to give it a try. 😉
I can’t see the magazines doing it unless they were forced to. I’d rather have less tampering in the first place. Like you, I am happy for them to gloss over spots etc, but to completely alter the way someone looks, well, that’s just insulting isn’t it? To the reader and the subject.
I never used to really notice it as I don’t often read these sorts of magazines but I was flicking through one at the hairdressers recently and was stunned by how obvious it was if you looked closely. Surely these people don’t really need so much changed?
That’s the really weird thing. they tend to look great anyway. Strange old world.
This very concept has been on my mind as well, and I hoped to blog my thoughts on it some time during the A-Z Challenge…I will gladly link back to your post when I do! I don’t know how much ‘regulation’ and state/government interference would be helpful, but I do know that more education on this and getting the ‘word’ out will certainly help! That is my intent using my post!
Love your blog!
Come by when you can – http://www.hammockinthehoneysuckle.blogspot.com
Happy A-Z!
Carrie
I’ve been looking through a popular photography magazine recently. One ad for software that “adjusts” portraits is terrifying, taking a totally beautiful woman and plasticizing her so she looks nothing like herself.
It is not better! I want to shout at somebody. It is not better!
A-Z @ Elizabeth Twist