Evolution of a Model

My last post reminded me of another video I saw a few years ago (below). With all of the special effects out there, people portrayed in mass media do not look real anymore. This is true of Lady Gaga, who seems like she would be an average looking girl from NYC when she's not on camera, as well as models.

Watching this video brings back memories of when I was 19 and my boyfriend at the time, who was a photo retoucher, was assigned to work on Cindy Crawford's face. I wasn't too shocked at that time; it was already commonplace. A friend of mine from college worked for a porn magazine when he graduated SVA. He also used photoshop, but it was often used to make sure the surgery scars on their breasts were not visible. Today, these alterations are often done for film/video/tv, as well as with print, as in Lady Gaga's video.

All of these alterations have had an effect on society. Many girls are self-conscious about the way they look because of all of the images that are imposed on us regularly and, more recently, men are also affected. The video below shows the process behind creating contemporary images of beauty and is sponsored by Dove, a company that would know about this type of thing. The video confirms that the images of beauty that many people aspire to replicate are not real.

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