The New York Times has a video op-ed in which a filmmaker named Jesse Epstein makes a case (and, really, who could argue?) that “magazines should let readers know if images have been retouched,” even if only by crediting photo retouchers, that all this (unacknowledged) retouching (the focus is on fashion magazines) is bad for, among other things, female self-esteem and body image.
(Not convinced? Remember that discussion on Fox News about how Newsweek, by running on its cover a supposedly un-retouched image of Sarah Palin, “slap[ped] her in the face” while “shocking and horrifying” “any woman” who saw the image?)
I don't think guys have the slightest clue of how pervasive airbrushing is and how it serves to undermine women's self esteem, especially since young men seem to be unhealthily fixated on women's weight, as in the skinnier the better. (But she had better have DDD 'totally natural' boobs above the ribs sticking out. Nothing less is acceptable.)
An actress with a 22-inch waist - which is extremely thin bordering on dangerously so for someone 5'9" tall, incidentally - will have her waist whittled down by magazine editors. Even she isn't thin enough. What does this tell the woman who is a size eight or ten? It says that they will never be good enough, that they are subhuman pond slime, so they might as well eat what they want because it doesn't matter - one pound overweight is as evil and disgusting as 150 lb. overweight. And I mean evil and disgusting - being one pound too heavy is considered a more serious moral failing, at least for women, than being a serial killer or a baby rapist would be for men. Women are judged by their weight alone, and every pound is a brick of evil.
So they give up. What does it matter if they're obese: at normal weight they're disgusting anyway, so why try?
#1 Posted by Charlene, CJR on Tue 10 Mar 2009 at 02:44 PM