Digital scale
Via the New York Times' health blog:
What is the fastest way to lose weight? Try getting a cover shoot for a magazine.
The Web site Jezebel.com this week offers a “Photoshop of Horrors,” identifying the 15 most “egregious” examples of digital retouching of photographs on magazine covers. Not surprisingly, many of the photos involve making already slim women look even slimmer.
I've posted a few over the past couple of years, as you can see here.
But Jezebel has the whole hall of shame, at least those that were glaringly obvious.
The worst? Pop star Kelly Clarkson on the cover of the September issue of Self, which isn't even a fashion magazine really but more about health and fitness.
In explaining the obvious fakeover, Self's editor would later blog (I added the boldface):
Kelly has this amazing spirit, the kind of joie de vivre that certain people possess that makes you want to stand closer to them, hoping that you can learn what they know. In this case, you get the feeling Kelly has not let fame spoil her, but also that she was just born confident, with a generosity of spirit that is all about others and rarely about herself. She is, like her music, giving and strong and confident and full of gusto. Did we alter her appearance? Only to make her look her personal best. Did we publish an act of fiction? No. Not unless you think all photos are that. But in the sense that Kelly is the picture of confidence, and she truly is, then I think this photo is the truest we have ever put out there on the newsstand.
Right.
Can you see the cover line at the top right of the issue?
Stay true to you and everyone else will love you too.
Unh-hunh.
No wonder so many girls are so screwed up.
Never mind the body, it doesnt even look like her face!
Posted by: jb | December 17, 2009 at 09:10 PM
I guess I'd be real unPC if I said, "Get me a cover shoot!"
Posted by: hysperia | December 18, 2009 at 02:32 AM
Wow! I've bookmarked that site for times when I need a reminder that what you see in a magazine is not real. I'm in my 50s, fit, strong and very healthy, but the young girl with no self-confidence who will always live inside me still wants to be a size 2. And that's terrible!
Posted by: Anne JW | December 18, 2009 at 12:48 PM
The digital game can be played the other direction, too.
Over at Worth1000, they sometimes do a contest called "Feeding Time," which is to make skinny celebrities... ummm.... non-skinny. Well, fat, really. Like http://fx.worth1000.com/entries/92475/diana-krall
Posted by: ...pat. | December 21, 2009 at 10:57 AM