Airbrushed Models

[archerships]

Via shinyhappylinks.

Intellectually, you know the models in magazines are airbrushed, but it's startling to see how much of a difference it makes when presented with real before and after pics:

http://homepage.mac.com/gapodaca/digital/bikini/index.html

Comments

[rachelmills.livejournal.com]

I think that is amaaaazing!!! I really feel so much better about myself now!!! There are women out there on the street that look just like that model that feel bad about themselves! Unbelievable! I'm showing all my female friends.

Re: Airbrushed Models

[mathemajician.livejournal.com]

I was looking at a glossy Greek magazine clearly directed as fashionable young women the other day (my friend has a Greek girlfriend...). Anyway, there was one ad in there where the girl wasn't just airbrushed, she actually wasn't real at all! Looking closely it seemed like they had had a mannequin wear the clothes and then stand in the right positions, then photographed the clothes. The fabric had too much detail to be fake. The mannequin was then replaced with an computer generated figure in the same positions. In the shots from a distance you couldn't easily tell, she just looked very heavily airbrushed etc and plastic looking. But there were a few shots that gave it away, in particular a close up of her face where you could clearly see that she wasn't real at all. The fact that they had this close up of her face shows that they company clearly didn't care if people realised that the model wasn't real, which is interesting too.

I have to wonder if this is the start of a trend? Why pay an expensive model when you can just put the clothes on a mannequin, photograph the clothes and then computer generate the person. It must be much cheaper and more reliable than employing a real human model.

Perhaps in the future the popular concept of feminine beauty might be defined by a complex set of mathematical equations on a computer?

Sick and weird...

Re: Airbrushed Models

[(Anonymous)]

I have to wonder if this is the start of a trend? Why pay an expensive model when you can just put the clothes on a mannequin, photograph the clothes and then computer generate the person. It must be much cheaper and more reliable than employing a real human model.

Bingo!

Vactors & digital models are the way of the future except for live events...including those in my bedroom., though at some point robotics and holographic projection will even provide this


I ran across an art show a few years back which as compelling, it was called "Not Real" a collection of images composited in Photoshop so craftingly to make it seem like everything was just taken with a camera. Gross filtering and accentuations, which changed the message the percieved message by a ton, just like the before/after mouseovers on the models. Their concern was it's misuse in news circles. Where we are supposed to be getting the 'truth'. They were looking for a visual stamp to indicate digital alteration, heh now it's so common, you'd have to have nested upon nested stamps.

Re: Airbrushed Models

[mathemajician.livejournal.com]

Um, right. Forgive me for being so old fashioned, but as for having "robot woman" in my bed... I don't think so. I'll stick to the real thing, blemishes and all. :)

[goldenfyre.livejournal.com]

Oh wow. That makes me feel a lot better. I had no idea how much they change in those things. She really had a couple inches of hips before they got to work on her! And the skin transformation is amazing. I am also going to be sending this to my female friends....

[ehintz.livejournal.com]

I prefer the before pictures. For me, the afters take away her humanity; she becomes a page in a magazine, unattractive and artificial. In the before shots, she's an attractive well proportioned woman, if I were single and met her somewhere I'd be interested in finding out if the package included a brain. ;-)

[visgoth.livejournal.com]

I was thinking pretty much the same thing. I wouldn't substitute "boring" for "unattractive," though. I don't think the after pictures are unattractive, so much as glamor magazine run-of-the-mill. "Beauty" that looks like it came off a production line just doesn't inspire much feeling in me at all, one way or another.

[visgoth.livejournal.com]

Whoops... That was supposed to be "I *would* substitute..."

I tried saying it two ways, and ended up with neither.

[ehintz.livejournal.com]

Good point, that is a better way of putting it. In the after shots, my reaction is not actually that she's unattractive (though that was how it came out when trying to put it into words), but rather uninspiring. Might as well be an inflatable doll; the brain recognizes she's artificial and has no interest.

[halleyscomet.livejournal.com]

Wow.

I't frightening what they do today.

The culture of shame will just get worse and worse.

Ug.

[missalicia1973.livejournal.com]

jeezy creezy...this one looks like a completely different person in her after shot.

http://homepage.mac.com/gapodaca/digital/blonde/index.html

[chutzpahgirl.livejournal.com]

I browsed even further on the site, looking for other people models. I found a blonde model whose eye wrinkles are totally like women her age. What I think I found also more disturbing is that there was a male model who had a bit of chub (not a lot) and the silhouette of his shirt was totally a straight line instead of the half-hourglass shape it was before.