Good Magazine: American Medical Association Officially Condemns Photoshopping
“The AMA this week formally denounced retouching pictures and asked ad agencies to consider setting stricter guidelines for how photos are manipulated before becoming advertisements. “We must stop exposing impressionable children and teenagers to advertisements portraying models with body types only attainable with the help of photo editing software,” said AMA board member Barbara McAneny.”
But not just children and teenagers. And Kim Kardashian is the perfect example. Because unlike the Jane Russel of today, Kim Kardashian is lauded because she has “curves” and is hot with those curves, that ass, those breasts. But even she is not ideal because with that ass comes dimples, and with those hips comes a hip bone that sticks out, and she needs muscular shoulders to hold up those breasts, which by the way seems to not just exist in the cleavage on the front of her chest, but also alongside her arm (read: her breast are round! magic!) And beyond her body, they have changed her skin from yellow toned to pink toned.
I am 27 and this is what I notice when I see this picture. All of the imperfections that she has. I had to tell myself to look at her face. I am not a child or a teenager. I am not anorexic, nor have I ever been. I have had plenty of men (and women) love my body. So why do I still notice every detail in a celebrity body? Why do I care? And worse than that, while I’m ok telling the internet that I care, I would be so mortified if the current man who loves my body knew how much time I think about my body and Kim Kardashian’s body— how much time I have rationalized my yellow skin and big thighs by comparing myself to her, rather than just being happy with myself, my career, my friends, and even my body.
re from J: A, this is like when I first started watching Mad Men I was totally mesmerized by Christina Hendricks belly. Embarrassingly, my first response was “How could they let that on screen?” I was almost horrified by the facts of the female form when presented so honestly. Like how there is this great lie that if you have big old boobs you can also have skinny little shoulders and arms. Or that women, especially women of a certain size, don’t have a bit of a tummy pooch. While it seemed acceptable for film from the 50s to show women with tights and fatty arms I had, despite being a good old fashioned feminist, become accustomed to the modern projection of women being so tightly edited and manipulated.
So yeah, it ain’t just children and teenagers. Grown ass women and self-described feminists can easily be warped into finding the natural unnatural.
