Padaviya

History and women’s studies professor Keri Manning, along with Aydrea at The Oreo Experience, Sully R., and Dmitriy T.M., sent a link to a series of illustrations of pin-up girls (from the ’50s, I’m estimating) alongside the original photograph on which they were modeled (Buzzfeed).  Today we bemoan photoshopping, and here we have pre-photoshop examples of the kind of free-reign that artists had in idealizing their subject.  Dr. Manning notes, for example, that overall:

Bellies become flatter. Breasts become perkier.  Cleavage appears that wasn’t there before.  Waistlines shrink; the difference between the bustline and waistline gets more pronounced.  Hair gets longer.  Hair goes from brunette to blonde.  Inner thighs emerge from the shadows.  Cheeks become flushed, lips are quite red.

An interesting look at a photoshop forerunner:

More images at Buzzfeed and Pristina.

In the latest re-touching leak, before and after shots of Katy Perry’s Rolling Stone cover were counterposed at Elephant this month and sent in by Dmitriy T.M.   It’s a nice reminder that even incredibly beautiful, thin women — women who, for all intents and purposes, already conform to contemporary standards of beauty — are also being photoshopped to conform even more closely to an impossible ideal. Notice the slimming of her thigh, plumping of her breasts, smoothing of her skin, and re-making of her right hand.

Jacob, a Quebec-based clothing company, has decided to stop retouching both its lingerie and its clothing models. Spokeswoman Cristelle Basmaji explains, “As a socially responsible company, JACOB has always made an effort to promote a healthy image of the female body. By adopting an official policy and broadcasting it publicly, we hope to reverse the trend in digital photo manipulation that has become excessive in our industry.”

Katrin discovered a particularly ironic bit of photoshopping.  The first picture is of Rosie Huntington-Whiteley on a photo shoot, the second is her ad for the Victoria’s Secret “I Love My Body” ad campaign.  Notice that the body she is supposedly loving has significantly less more cleavage than the body we see in the first photo.  Apparently even models’ bodies are unlovable without re-touching (or surgery?).

(click through for pictures)

The stars of Sex and the City 2 are the latest eyes of the anti-Photoshop, err, excrement storm swirling around progressive blogs of all kind (including this one). While I’m certainly no fan of overenthusiastic retouching, I think Photoshop itself is sort of a leaf issue with the root being the bolstering of one, true beauty standard. And on that note, I’m not sure that the “40 is the new 20” meme most actresses of a certain age are on is actually good for women of any age.

Perhaps you’ve heard that France and Britain are considering photoshop laws: Laws that would require advertisers to indicate when an image has been digitally altered, or banning photoshopping altogether in advertisements aimed at people under a certain age. Last year, legislators on both sides of the Channel proposed legislation, arguing that highly photoshopped images, largely of female beauty, set unrealistic standards for young women and can lead to poor body image and eating disorders.