Unreachable Expectations

When we walk up to the register at any drug or grocery store, we are bombarded with magazines and tabloids showing one of three things. The first is the "best and worst celebrity bathing suit shots," showing images of cellulite thighs and flabby stomachs. The second is fitness magazines with tanned models with little on, weighting 90lbs. Lastly we see magazines with quick-fix headlines like "how to lose 20lbs in 2 weeks and keep it off!"

Most women after looking at these images of flawless skin and perfect abs end up being escorted home by Ben and Jerry and are welcomed home by their broken in couch. We try to eat right (most of the time) and we try to fit in exercise between work and picking up the kids, but somehow it doesn’t seem to be enough.

So after all of our hard work, why can’t we look like the models on fitness and design magazines? Well, I’ll let you in on a secrete…neither do the models! The men and women who are photographed in these magazines do not look anything like the finished product. They are older, scarred, larger, paler and so much less attractive than they are perceived in the 2-D form.

Through the use of Photoshop and other photo manipulation programs, these people are cropped, skewed, altered, tanned, and changed to an unrealistic perfection. Barbie would even envy the women who are in some of these magazines. Take a look for yourself.

As you can see, this woman looks fifteen years younger in the image on the left than the original on the right. Her jaw construction has been significantly altered. Her skin has been smoothed over and all of her blemishes have been removed. The manipulated image even shows evidence of her eye shape changing as well as her lips and shoulders. This hopefully demonstrates how even the models who are praised for their extreme beauty aren't good enough to be placed in a magazine without extreme alterations. To see more photos like these visit www.digitalphotoshopretouching.com and watch how the professionals can change anyone’s raw image into an unobtainable figure.