Photoshop is a program used by many retail editors to enhance the visual design of the products they try to sell. Although this may sound like a great idea at first, it has changed the way many people perceive themselves. It has even caused a new social construction, a tacit agreement on what people believe, on how women should look. This has caused many females to feel ashamed of their body, and has helped spread harmful practices such as anorexia. They feel that they have to discipline their body into looking better, thus creating docile bodies. However, many of these body practices strain the body and may even lead to death.
Not only does Photoshop cause women to strive to get unattainable bodies, it has also affected men’s perception on women. Men are now less pleased with their partners and want them to look more like the “ideal” women that they see in advertisements. This desire has caused many women to undergo surgery to please their partners. However, many males are still not pleased and continue to buy beauty enhancing products for their partners. Overall, it has caused “women to embody the masculine values of the public arena” (Bordo 173). Through this women have become degraded and looked upon solely as sexual objects instead of people.
The worst part about it is that many women refuse to acknowledge that many of the pictures they see in ads have been manipulated, when in fact nearly 99% of them have. Overall Photoshop may have helped to sell products but it has come at a sharp price of our cultural view on women.
I agree. Photoshop is a fantastic tool, but it has allowed for a new level of body image problems. It is impossible to look like the people in the ads, but it is what we now expect of ourselves and others. It does have the intended effect for the ad, but doesn't help the view of women as sexual objects.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the post and the comment above. Using photoshop in ads has definitely had an impact on society and the body image of women. Women are striving for something that is unattainable because we don’t want to admit that every ad we look at has been manipulated. Advertisers want us to have the desire to look like the models in the pictures and trick us into believing if we buy their product we will look like them. I actually think the “before” picture in the example above makes the model look better.
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