Well, readers. I’ve got some good news and I’ve got some bad news.
The good news is that it seems as though the outrage against society’s “thin ideal” is finally being recognized. Magazine photo editors have finally gotten the message and have stopped Photoshopping images of women down to impossibly skinny frames.
The bad news is that instead of Photoshopping women to look skinnier, now editors are adding fake curves. According to the lovely ladies at Beauty Redefined, curvy is the new skinny, but only in places curves are “allowed.”
Sigh. SO CLOSE, YOU GUYS. SO CLOSE AND YET, SO FAR.
Seriously, people? The problem isn’t that images of women have been manipulated to look thin. The problem is that images of women (and men, for that matter) are being manipulated at all. I’ve been dying for magazine photo editors to get this through their heads and with this new revelation, I feel like I’ve spent the better part of my life begging my parents for a puppy, and they just finally agreed to get me one. Only they came home with a beat up Pound Puppy they found at the local Goodwill and hoped it would pass.
And so. Here we are again singing the same song reinforcing the idea that one body type is better than all the others. Where it used to be impossibly skinny, now it’s impossibly curvy; that is, thin all over except where curves are acceptable (boobs and butt, essentially).
As someone who falls in the “curvy” category (or plus-sized, if you can believe it) I’ve always wished that I could have this exact body type — thin everywhere, but with killer boobs and a butt. But even when I was starving myself into misery, I still had the body type I do: curvy, even in the spots where it’s not acceptable (bigger arms, bigger thighs, and so on). I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had a conversation with another girl about how we wish we could switch body parts with each other so we could fit the ideal.
ME: Ugh, I hate how big my boobs are. I wish I was skinny all over like you.
FRIEND: Whatever! I wish I had your shape and actually looked the way a woman is supposed to look!
ME: But we’re all ’supposed to be’ skinny like you.
FRIEND: Yeah, but with big boobs like you!
I wasn’t born knowing that there is a “right” way to look and a “wrong” way to look. I was taught it from a very young age. Sadly, I was also taught that, thanks to Photoshop in the media, the “right” way to look is also the “impossible” way to look.
Either it’s being so skinny that you’d have to have most of your rib cage removed…
Or it’s extremely curvy, but only in the places that curves are accepted.
And if you don’t look like this? Well, it’s no one’s fault but your own because you’re the only one not working hard enough.
To learn more about this stupid new trend in Photoshopping, click here to read the article by Beauty Redefined.
