I don’t know how many of you have seen this, but the video below is an advertisement that is part of the Dove Beauty Campaign.
The first time that I saw this video, it just really amazed me. I knew that photos were edited etc using photoshop, but I didn’t realise that it was to such a great extent. I realise that company’s want their models to look amazing, but they go too far away from reality, into a fantasy world of what beauty should be like. This in turn affects the self esteem of other people that aren’t as “beautiful”, and who don’t realise that the models in the magazines don’t actually look like that in real life.
Of course there are some models that are naturally beautiful and don’t need as much photo editing, but is there really a need to make everyone look like this? What about the self-esteem of the actual model, doesn’t she just end up feeling that the way she looks still isn’t good enough? Even though they have professional make up artists and hairdressers and stylists, they still need to alter the model. They not only play with colours, which isn’t really that bad, but they actually change the facial features of the model, they change her bone structure, until it’s not even the same person anymore. It’s like the model is just a building block onto which they’ll build their own perception of what beauty is, and then push it on to the rest of the world.
There are lots of other videos on http://www.youtube.com that show in much greater detail how this manipulation takes place.
