Exploring

For my project, I decided to explore the use of “Photoshopped beauty” as this was the medium we were using to complete the assignment. For the first image titled “Exploring”, I made use of the green-screen technology we learned to place the women into the foreground of the mountainous background. I then placed the image of the infamous “Dove model” on top of the layers and added an outer and inner glow to her. This was to give the effect that she was an omniscient, heavenly being with her multiple digital edits. Finally, I placed the text on the image, making sure to emphasize the “true beauty” line.

This image, to me, symbolizes the journey which many women face to find their “beauty.” Unfortunately, this journey is prolonged and made all the more difficult to complete through various media representations of what “true beauty” really is. Technology has also played a big part in this journey, as we have seen the wonders that Photoshop can do to any photo. It ultimately leaves one hesitant to believe anything one sees anymore. The text in the image is satirical of course, poking fun at the fact that many companies will sell this “manufactured beauty” as being the face of “true beauty.”

Vintage Ads

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In this vintage ad, I edited the text from the original to give the image another direction. I also added the image of the model to the ad to play into this theme of “manufactured beauty.” The modifications I made to this vintage ad definitely did not make it any less gender-targeted. The original plays on conservative female gender roles very heavily, and this was something I wanted to continue in my edit. We see in the original that the man brings up the fact that his wife cooks, cleans, dusts, and seems to thrive on it…even noting that “the harder a wife works, the cuter she looks.” I struggled to understand how anyone could have seen the logic in that statement, but the context of the time meant it worked.

The image is again meant to be a satirical approach to “manufactured beauty” as the husband asks his wife if she could look more like the model. This statement is one that I am sure is posed to women all over the world, and it is an unreasonable request or expectation because the Photoshopping behind everything simply does not allow for natural beauty and distorts what we see as real. To emphasize these unfair expectations, the asterisk in the husband’s statement draws our attention to his wife’s other duties (making his dinner, ironing, and doing his laundry), all while he asks her to look “cuter.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

LAX

The Estee Lauder billboard image was actually one that I took while at LAX dropping off my cousin. When I stepped into the terminal, these huge billboards immediately caught my attention, and as I shared in class, I was instantly drawn to how “manufactured” the women looked. This gave me an idea to do some subtle editing to the image to redirect its message. To do this, I used the spot-healing brush with the content-aware fill we learned about to modify the text area of the billboard. This was mainly to maintain the even lighting of that area of the image. I then added the text, including some of the most-used tools for editing images of people (we used these in our experiments with “Mr. Darcy”). Lastly, I added the Photoshop logo to stand in on the bottle and used puppet warp to give the logo an angled look and feel.

The edit in the text of the billboard is meant to show that Photoshop plays such a big part in our everyday lives that we hardly even notice it. Almost any image, ad, billboard, etc. we see has been modified and it is remarkable that these tools and technology have made it so simple that we now take it for granted. We go on without questioning. We go without doubting. The subtleness of the edits is merely a reflection of how subtle manufactured beauty inserts itself into our lives and our thoughts.

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