Photoshop got a flogging yesterday, with the
New York Times reporting on a
backlash against manipulation of pictures of models and celebrities on the covers (and in the pages) of magazines. It’s an
old argument—that these images are too thin and too perfect, and especially too
fake, to be healthy models for teenage girls. The surprising thing is that the
Times ran the story (again) on the same day news broke about what’s really happening to American women: Two-thirds of women of child-bearing age are overweight; a third are obese and at risk of gaining a dangerous amount of weight in pregnancy.
So yeah, fashion photography has lost all touch with reality—if it was ever
in touch with reality (isn’t fantasy the point of fashion photography?)—by indulging in the retouching, boob jobs, hip reductions and teeth whitening procedures that are routinely performed on the images of women they run. But aspiring to be ridiculously thin is hardly the problem for the majority of women.
The Institute of Medicine is so concerned about obese moms-to-be that it rolled out
new weight-gain guidelines especially for them: 11 to 20 pounds, compared to the 25-35 pounds normal-weight women should gain. Or what used to be normal. It sounds punitive: If you’ve been bad and packed on the pounds, you don’t get to indulge in a pregnancy like everyone else. Another mean-spirited conspiracy against the plus-sized! But this is not a cosmetic issue or a cultural norms issue; it’s a health crisis. This weight can be deadly for both mother and baby.
While we’re crying foul over the ounce of fat shaved from Gwyneth Paltrow's arm on some
Vogue cover, and editors are bragging that their slightly less anemic or slightly less retouched models satisfy women’s taste for “authenticity,” “real” women are getting fatter and fatter … and fatter.
Showing a little cellulite in print isn't going to quell our obsession with perfection, and it’s not going to address the obesity epidemic. The
Times can applaud
Life & Style for its silly "Exclusive! 100% Unretouched Photo Shoot" of Kim Kardashian (a brilliant money-maker if I ever saw one), but the same issue that shows a perhaps hippier-than-normal Kardashian also includes an oozy interview in which the reality TV star emphasizes that
she loves her "true size"—which just so happens to fit snugly in tiny size 27 jeans. (Watch out, Kim, you don’t want to wear those
jeans too tight!)
If we’re going to shift to a healthier middle ground (and good God, we need to), we should stop getting our panties in a bunch over photo retouching of size-0 women and start worrying about the fact that fat is the new normal, the majority, the reality.
