Is it ok to photoshop the picture of a celebrity? I would argue that it generates an unrealistic body image that people will try to emulate, which is of course futile because they're competing against a computer program that erases flaws with the click of a mouse.

 

 

 

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Your thoughts? A contrary argument?

I think it's stupid to do it. It creates am impossible amount of perfection, causing people to feel that they can never look good enough. We are bombarded with a mindset that these people are what we should strive to look like, yet they themselves don't look that, for a lack of a better word, perfect.

Competition has already done the damage. It can't be reversed. If company X starts using 'natural' looking models, their sales will drop when compared to a company using 'pretty' looking models who look more artificial than human with impossible-to-have skin textures.

 

 

 

It makes no business sense, except for the companies that build their brand on 'naturality' such as Dove. For other companies it's financial suicide to start using model pictures which haven't been modified to perfection.

 

 

 

Marketing is deception. Nobody wants to look ordinary by using a product. They want to believe they can achieve the perfection the model achieved in that picture. The average customer will buy the product advertised by a perfect face rather than one photographed naturally with no post-shoot improvements.

Competition has already done the damage. It can't be reversed. If company X starts using 'natural' looking models, their sales will drop when compared to a company using 'pretty' looking models who look more artificial than human with impossible-to-have skin textures.

 

 

 

It makes no business sense, except for the companies that build their brand on 'naturality' such as Dove. For other companies it's financial suicide to start using model pictures which haven't been modified to perfection.

 

 

 

Marketing is deception. Nobody wants to look ordinary by using a product. They want to believe they can achieve the perfection the model achieved in that picture. The average customer will buy the product advertised by a perfect face rather than one photographed naturally with no post-shoot improvements.

 

 

 

Spot on, but what about the ethical side of things?

 

 

 

Spot on, but what about the ethical side of things?

 

 

 

 

 

There are no ethics in the current world of business. Just shinny dollars.

 

 

 

I came into this topic thinking it was about photoshoping peoples heads onto celebrities, but this makes more sense. And yes it does suck.

It's only ethically unjust when people are ignorant enough to be fooled by it. The whole concept of celebrity is artificial anyway, I don't see why photographs should be any different.

 

 

 

Really I think you need a female perspective on this, as I'm sure that's where the damage is done. I've never looked at a picture of Brad Pitt and hated myself.

Generaly speaking it is unethical, of course the degree of how "wrong" this is depends widely on what photoshopping was done. I think it is perfectly fine to fix someones complection up, especially since makeup would be used if photoshopping wasn't. On the other hand, editing someone's weight to make them look better is innapropriate.

I consider editing an image of a celebrity for any reason is unethical. There are two obvious reasons you'd edit an image of a celebrity: to make them more beautiful, or to ruin their public image. The first one is easy to spot: magazine models that were airbrushed to perfection or had their acne, dental hygene, and other minor flaws covered up. They are the cause of huge amounts of teenage girls doing harmful things to their body to look more like their model on the magazine. The latter of the two reasons is also incredibly harmful. There have been some famous situations, more recently involving Miley Cyrus, where someone fixed her image into an adult-rated pic to cause massive controversy. Just as photoshopped pictures can make a celebrity more beautiful, they can also ruin their image, and it's very difficult to prove the picture is fake since most people believe only what they see and will not listen to anything else.

I consider editing an image of a celebrity for any reason is unethical. There are two obvious reasons you'd edit an image of a celebrity: to make them more beautiful, or to ruin their public image. The first one is easy to spot: magazine models that were airbrushed to perfection or had their acne, dental hygene, and other minor flaws covered up. They are the cause of huge amounts of teenage girls doing harmful things to their body to look more like their model on the magazine. The latter of the two reasons is also incredibly harmful. There have been some famous situations, more recently involving Miley Cyrus, where someone fixed her image into an adult-rated pic to cause massive controversy. Just as photoshopped pictures can make a celebrity more beautiful, they can also ruin their image, and it's very difficult to prove the picture is fake since most people believe only what they see and will not listen to anything else.

 

 

 

I honestly get tired of the "teen girls look up to them" argument.

 

 

 

Is that any worse than being told that being fat is OK, when it's self destructive, adds strain to all parts of your body, and encourages complacency and inactivity?

 

 

 

Sure, a few teenagers might try purging to lose weight. But as we near 50% obesity rates, which problem is more prelevant?

 

 

 

Better to set positive goals and glamorize health and fitness than normalizing unhealthy and self decieving "fat pride".

One thing I do disagree with is how most people seem to take it out on the companies. Sure they shouldn't of started to photoshop people, but the public also has the responsibility to think for themselves. We are at the point now where most schools educate students that what the companies put out is wrong and fake. People need to understand that if they stop buying into that crap, it wont matter if companies do photoshop people or not, cause no one will believe that it is a true image.

One thing I do disagree with is how most people seem to take it out on the companies. Sure they shouldn't of started to photoshop people, but the public also has the responsibility to think for themselves. We are at the point now where most schools educate students that what the companies put out is wrong and fake. People need to understand that if they stop buying into that crap, it wont matter if companies do photoshop people or not, cause no one will believe that it is a true image.

 

Problem is that the world will always have an over-population of stupid people. (People with a mental condition that affects their ability to think are excused.)

Some photoshopping is acceptable, such as removing that huge zit on your nose, or remove really bad dark rings under your eyes. Fix the lighting is ok, it's no fun to hardly see anything.

 

Removing skin texture is no-no, (I walked into that trap myself) and making the models thin is just bad, really bad, just look what the photoshopped-thin models do on pro-ana communities.

 

Removing freckles is just silly, they are a part of your face, same with the moles on your face, let them stay, otherwise your personality is lost. (I use "you" and "your" in general, not pointed at anyone.)

 

 

 

Photoshopped make-up ads is just stupid.

 

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As no one can have lashes like that without using fake lashes. :P

 

Same with anti-wrinkle ads, just looks ridiculous.

 

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Hah.

It's only ethically unjust when people are ignorant enough to be fooled by it.

 

Hit the nail on the head. If I'm stupid enough to believe it, whos fault is it? The business or mine?

Meh, advertising is all about deceit. Rule #1 about looking at ads is to take them with a grain of salt - we're such a connected society that we should all know this.

 

 

 

So yeah, I'd cover all advertising as unethical. I passed by a Casino de Montreal ad today and it was a picture of a lady winning the jackpot at a slot machine. If they weren't deceitful, they wouldn't put something that happens only extremely rarely on their poster. McDonalds might as well hang a poster with a guy chocking on a BigMac : "Here's what happened once".

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It's pretty stupid, as that sort of "perfection" is impossible to achieve in real life, but they keep presenting it, and so gals who are easily swayed by this sort of thing think that they have to look like an airbrushed blow-up doll every waking day. So they spend all their time putting on make-up and working on their look that they miss the most important part of being young - actually learning stuff.

 

 

 

So they grow up and become bimbos. Then they get old, lose their looks, and realize they're useless.

Well, I believe most people realize this. Parents generally educate their children about this early on in their lives. I don't know of many people foolish enough to actually believe that everything the see/read is true.

 

 

 

It's quite amazing when you meet girls who are more attractive than these said celebrities. Natural beauty is so much more attractive than make-up, cover-up, and any other ups that women & maybe men cover themselves with.

It's stupid to do, but I would hardly call it unethical. After all, almost everyone knows that they're touched up.

I would argue that it generates an unrealistic body image that people will try to emulate

I'm with Lateralus on this one, it's ultimately our responsibility. If it didn't work, companies wouldn't do it. It's stupid as hell, but it's a bit silly to blame the advertisers putting out what works. The sad part is, as a collective, humans are genetically hardcoded to shoot for "average" because "average" means "less genetically deviant from the succesful formula". Darwin's cousin (no joke) figured that out in, like, 1890s by accident; Averaging facial features will appear more attractive than the individual faces used to compose it.

 

 

 

 

 

Secondly, I think it's pretty funny that they've taken things so far that when they start photoshopping someone who's face you recognize from a movie (where they're in makeup), the photshopped result comes out looking like someone else. Maybe I'm just paying an unnatural amount of attention to people's faces *cough* but I've seen several pictures that are so obviously photoshopped it doesn't look like the "original person" at all. I remember this exceptionally scary example of Oprah where they'd adjusted (among other things, no doubt) the distance between her eyes. Not only did it not look like her, it looked vaguely non-human.

After all, almost everyone knows that they're touched up.

 

 

 

How are you meant to know when a picture has been touched up? Some are obvious, yes, but some are not. Are you meant to assume that all pictures are touched up? And in that case, it just means that you shouldn't trust anything.

 

 

 

What if advertisers had to add a little * to any pictures that had been digitally enhanced, to denote that they have been changed (beyond cropping)? I imagine that advertisers wouldn't do it if they had to make it explicitly known that it had been changed.

I think it's wrong. It's making people think that they can look like they do but they can't, but still they will try. They will buy all these products and spend hours getting ready and faff over their appearance every twenty seconds because they want to look like the girl on TV. It's ludicrous.

 

 

 

I've never done that sort of thing (though I'm hardly normal) but when I look at myself and think 'I'm ugly', am I really ugly? Or is that just what the companies want me to think so I'll buy their products? They set out unrealistic standards and people, as idiots, try to live up to them.

Xraying them is fun though. But yea, it's not really ethical, but still, if people can make money with it, they will do it.

Removing minor hiccups such as obvious spots and other blemishes I guess is ok; but when a model is so perfect that the female population idolizes them, and tries to emulate them exactly, that's when it's going to far.

How come only airbrushed photos catch flak for idolizing a perfect fiction?

 

 

 

Idiolizing something so perfect it's impossible is something we do everywhere. Romance novels. Supermodels. The cheeseburger on the poster. The unstoppable action hero. The flawless car.

 

 

 

Either attack the entire concept of obsessing over perfection (a basic part of human nature) or point the blame at the people that take that so far they ruin their own lives over it.

 

 

 

The problem is with the girls that are so shallow that they can't face life without the media feeding them affirmation.

Here is the question, would anyone care if someone photo shopped my photo to look better? I think not. And from what I saw in you examples, a lot of it was just lighting and color... not even like tanning color, like shirt color....

Here is the question, would anyone care if someone photo shopped my photo to look better? I think not. And from what I saw in you examples, a lot of it was just lighting and color... not even like tanning color, like shirt color....

 

If you were a celebrity with thousands of kids wanting to look like you, then it would be a problem.