It should pretty clearly be "yggy," not "iggles."
"Iggles" is a joke that only the cool kids know about.
Back to your cave, young Tim.
The neck stretch photoshop move was pretty freaky.
Yeah, totally. Then there a bunch of little changes that I missed the first time: they take a bit off her shoulders, and make her lips fuller.
The neck stretch was almost cartoon like. They just grabbed her head and pulled!
And actually, while I know that advertising images are photoshopped, I'm with Yggles (striking an average) in being surprised at the extent of the manipulation. The model is very pretty to start with, but the final image changes her proportions completely. I had vaguely assumed that photoshopping is more for eliminating blemishes and adjusting skin tone than that sort of wholesale reshaping.
I think it depends a lot on the model, the campaign and the photographer. There've been high-profile examples of that sort of photoshopping before, though. Kate Winslet's cover shoot for GQ? (Some men's magazine, anyway).
Fairly extreme reshaping -- particularly in full-length body shots where legs are routinely stretched and waists narrowed -- is not uncommon. Or at least that's the impression I've picked up from magazines and TV.
It's also worth point out (as if I need to) that the ad is itself an ad, iyswim. So they have a vested interest in illustration the more extreme end of the photoshopping spectrum.
1. Stop oppressing me, ogged.
2. I'm with Yglesias, too. People have neither the time nor the energy to deconstruct the reality presented to them in the real world.
3. It's weird to think that there's a whole inverted fakeness behind the ad. I wonder how many people they had to look at before they found the one they could transform in a way that gave the impression they wanted.
I'm with Yglesias, too. People have neither the time nor the energy to deconstruct the reality presented to them in the real world
I took Yglesias's point to be that they can't, even if they have the time/energy. I'm not sure that's true.
I was professionally made up once for a makeup artist's portfolio; outside of the context of the photos, I just looked freakish.
Here's a website someone linked to at Ezra's. The photoshop jobs are on the right sidebar.
I think it's true that people can't. You know, consciously, that these things are false. But you can't, since the people doing them are experts, actually determine how they've been manipulated or to what extent unless it's been done badly. What one consciously knows often has surprisingly little effect on how one thinks and feels about what one sees: we're visual animals, and we rely heavily on our sense of sight to construct an internal sense of reality. You can't possibly spend as much time as it would take to reprocess and consciously rethink all the advertising and manipulated imagery you see in a day, or you would never get anything else done.
I took Yglesias's point to be that they can't, even if they have the time/energy.
Given the relentlessness of the presentation, I don't know if you can caveat away the time/energy constraint.
My S.O. works in digital compositing for films and T.V., and it's quite startling to see the degree to which film and video is regularly manipulated and changed. A couple months ago he was working on a love scene in a major motion picture -- the studio had decided that the actress' nose looked too big, and his job was to make it smaller.
Also insidious: the ubiquity of 16-going-on-30 teenoid melodramas. You there, you can't graduate from high school, you're only nine years old—says me, my grasp of actual humans loosened by years of self-medicating with Bufferol and Veronicaine.
There's a way we accept what we see in a photo that we might not accept in other forms of representation-- I saw a painter doing a lanscape once, working from a photo. There was a cedar tree that was a perfect cone over a trunk that was off center a lot. You never even would see it in a photo, but it jumped out at you in a drawing.
One thing about the photo manipulation site that Jackmormon posted struck me: The mainpulator was killing effects of natural light, even when they did not have to do with "blemishes" or the like. There was one with a square of light across a model's thigh. The bit of light captured represents something I like in photographs, and was removed. After I noticed that, I noticed that sort of "smoothing" in all of the photographs. Everything was being reduced to an air-brushed sameness. The thing that may tip off this sort of manipulation is the loss of personality, particularly in things like skin tone. Teach yourself to see it and maybe these pictures may become like the off-center trunk under the tree-- this all may be a matter of learning to see the tricks and then you won't be so accepting.
Teach yourself to see it and maybe these pictures may become like the off-center trunk under the tree-- this all may be a matter of learning to see the tricks and then you won't be so accepting.
I think this is right. There are two issues: 1, whether we're being bombarded with a particular standard of beauty, and 2, whether we think that what we're seeing is "real." 1 is true even if all we have is the Lara Croft video game. Clearly not real, but still an effective image. I do think you can teach yourself to see images as more Lara Croft than real.
Another thing is you can actually seek out images that counter the standard. I like to do this by watching real people and trying to see what's attractive about them (rather than the knee-jerk tendency a lot of us have to nit-pick). Also alternapress type images and ads are often less manipulated, both because there's less money to do so and b/c there's a political agenda there.
The site is slow, but for some pretty dramatic transformations, check this out.
Maybe the viewer can visually attune himself to the most egregious form of manipulation (the Parmigianino-esque neck job) but at root it's a manipulative medium. I don't mean to be froofy about it, but there's no mechanical or digital reproduction of an image without making decisions about certain variables in order to facilitate the reproduction. How are you supposed to know that the light has been heavily manipulated?
And it's not possible to know except after the fact (or, if you've been told beforehand) that the model's image hasn't been presented with fidelity. It doesn't matter if the resulting image looks particularly "real" to us—it's consistent with commercial imagery that we previously accepted (or questioned critically; YMMV). It's not true that Photoshop has made digital manipulation more effective or pervasive. The limits to Photoshop's application in commercial imagery are what people will accept, and that standard is "smoke and mirrors" and always has been.
To some extent photography has always been that way. Old school Hollywood portrait photographers shot on 8 x 10 glass plate negatives. Not because smaller film formats weren't available but because you can hand paint directly onto an 8 x 10 glass negative and touch out all the flaws.
Late 60s fashion photography is quite interesting because there's a move towards using hand-held 35mm cameras and fairly fast grainy film which gives a particular aesthetic -- and, is also slightly less amenable to post-processing tricks. Images from that period look strikingly raw compared to modern images -- even though they are still quite highly composed and carefully lit.
it's not possible to know except after the fact (or, if you've been told beforehand) that the model's image hasn't been presented with fidelity
So isn't your working assumption that it hasn't?
Also alternapress type images and ads are often less manipulated, both because there's less money to do so and b/c there's a political agenda there.
At least up until the point they become profitable.
Even if you consciously assume that every commercial photograph you see is manipulated, though, that doesn't let you work backwards to a 'realer' image. You're still living a world in which a whole bunch of what you see every day is fantasy.
You're still living a world in which a whole bunch of what you see every day is fantasy.
Yeah, I agree, which is why I tried to separate the two points in 18. I think it helps to remember that it's fantasy, but it's not like immunization.
23: Oh, sure. But the mere knowledge that manipulation is omnipresent in these contexts has very little impact on how I see them, to wit. I still find myself thinking, Wow, SMG is smokin' in this picture, instead of recognizing that I've fallen prey to whatever corporation intends to push "SMG" on me and my demographic cohort and lamenting appropriately.
Wow. I think I'm more on the LB side of this. I can know that they airbrush away imperfections, including more than just evening out skin tone. But all of that knowledge wouldn't give me a good mental image of what the model would look like without the manipulation after the fact, and it's that image in front of us which we'll react to.
My sister was fortunate enough, when she had her senior pictures taken, to model for a local studio. My sister is quite beautiful, but the stunning creature that emerged in the glamor shots (about 3 of the 25 poses) is not how she normally looks. The studio didn't do anything more than airbrush her skin and intensify some of her color, but my little sister, with muddy blue eyes and dishwater blonde hair normally, has shiny strawberry blonde hair and piercing turquoise eyes.
I still find myself thinking, Wow, SMG is smokin' in this picture
Well then you're a big ol' sucker, Armsmasher. You should be thinking, "I wonder what she really looks like." Then you should go to IMDB and find the event pictures, or search the phun forums to find out. Then you should post them to your blog, and tell people how she's not really all that hot.
And then (you're baiting me, right ogged? I'm good with that) we're back to the problem that 'hott' is defined as manipulated fantasy images, while all actual women are inferior and vaguely distasteful.
One of my first thoughts was, "I want to learn how to use Photoshop like that."
My favorite was the rebuttal from his brother that argued that the rise of amateur porn cancels out the body image distortion caused by digital manipulation in advertising. I don't agree with the argument but it amused me to see him out-contraried.
'hott' is defined as manipulated fantasy images
I totally agree that this is a problem. I'd like everyone to know that the people they see in ads don't exist.
If you're talking about 29, I'm kidding about the last part of that.
Kidding, baiting, potato, potahto. (It's interesting that the 'potahto' accent has pretty much entirely died out in the wild. Has anyone ever met someone under sixty or so who talked like that?)
I've known a few women who were model-beautiful in real life without working at it very hard (except to get a good haircut). My guess, though, is that they wouldn't be model-beautiful if photographed, because a still picture allows close examination, and IRL there are a lot of distracting physical-presence and personality things, which mean you will respond to an actual human being rather than to an image. (IE, you lose your objectivity and scientific attitude).
My sister looks fantastic at 56, but I watch her work on it every morning and it's hard work.
34: Saw that and wondered if that was who that was. Didn't make any sense to me either.
Yeah, I agree, which is why I tried to separate the two points in 18. I think it helps to remember that it's fantasy, but it's not like immunization
Which leaves us where? Responding to a world which we know to be false, and from we know we cannot recover the "authentic" world? Welcome to modern alienation and anomie. Better to accept the Matrix and enjoy the steak.
Bill Simmons had a good, but not unreprehesible, discussion of how media images affect male views of attractiveness when he was talking about the wire:
Meaning reprehensible in its own way, but different?
British TV affects me that way -- while they have pretty people, they don't seem to have the "Only superhumanly pretty people" filter. Watching Coupling, for example, the first couple of episodes I was kind of bemused by the redhead, whose name I can't remember -- she was plain enough, by which I mean only a lot prettier than I am rather than infinitely prettier than I am, that she'd only show up on American TV in a role where her unattractiveness was a plot point. By halfway through the first season, I was reacting to her the way I would to someone who looked like her in person, as very attractive.
42: My wife's remarked about that for years: a more expansive and flexible idea of what's attractive seems to be operating, at the very least. I was describing Helen Mirren as Tennyson to my daughter, calling her beautiful, and my wife corrected me to say she was "interesting looking."
20: God that link is depressing. All the younger women look better without the makeup, I think, and the older blonde gets all the character in her face airbrushed out. The blonde with the bangs definitely gets her skin improved, but her gorgeous eyes look less intense once they lose the contrast with her bad skin, oddly. What a depressing standard of beauty.
43: Your wife is just plain wrong. Mirren is freakishly good-looking.
Helen Mirren, wishing to be taken seriously for her acting, not just her looks.
What she is is late-middle-aged and not spackled all to hell and gone so that she looks 25 years younger.
And although in bed at night she has often thought of herself as sensual,...
Got some serious writing there, fella.
Love Helen Mirren but can't look at her the same way since seeing her lead naked men around by waist chains in The Trailer for a Remake of Gore Vidal's Caligula.
I watched "Boston Legal" for a while but eventually couldn't handle the beauty of the characters anymore. Here you can see representative photos.
I got tired of seeing "Denise" and instinctually thinking "Wow, there's the world's hottest woman." and then being reminded that she was supposed to be the ditzy bad-divorce woman....and then seeing "Brad" and thinking "Wow, that is the world's most handsome and charming man. He must be the alpha dog around here." and then remembering that he's supposed to be the humorless workaholic guy. The proper response to being told that these people are lawyers is "No they aren't, they're obviously some sort of model or TV actor. Look at their skin tone and toned muscles!"
No cast that includes ancient Shatner and bloated Spader can be chided for the "beauty of the characters."
I'd like everyone to know that the people they see in ads don't exist.
Exactly. This is why I don't consider conversations about celebrities the same as talking about real people. I just assume every image and interview I see is manipulated and/or scripted. I might as well be talking about unicorns.
I watched "Boston Legal" a couple of times, and all I could think was James Spader, James Spader, James Spader, James Spader, James Spader.
Also, "Brad" should get a pass by virtue of his work in Keen Eddie.
What strikes me about TV shows: almost all female leads have unusually long hair compared to where women wear their hair in real life. Glossy, slight wave, boob length hair.
talking about unicorns
Hot unicorns. That you'd like to fuck.
Seriously, I'd say there are two "separations" here. First, it's the "these people aren't real" issue, which I think walls off celebrity talk from talk about real people (not always, obviously, but it can, when it's not mean-spirited). Second, even when we're talking about paparazzi photos, I think most guys think of celebrities as people whose job it is to look good and be ogled, which makes discussing them in those terms ok, and which again separates that kind of talk from talk about real people.
Of course, these categories are porous, and I'm not trying to mount another defense of this kind of talk--lesson learned and all that, but I do think that a big part of the reason guys often don't see the problem with this kind of talk is that they're keeping these separations in mind.
I watched "Boston Legal" a couple of times
Saddest thing about Serial Drama Aversion Disorder victims is their evergreen belief that someday, they'll find a show, remember to watch it, and be able to talk to their friends about it.
I do think that a big part of the reason guys often don't see the problem with this kind of talk is that they're keeping these separations in mind.
I don't think it's possible to really keep those separations in mind. People watch a lot of TV, and look at a lot print advertising. In the course of an average day, you probably look at almost as many, maybe more, 'media faces' as you do faces in real life. Maybe I'm wrong and it is possible, but I think it's very very difficult not to make the media image your internalized norm of what people look like.
60 -- is there a 12-step support group I can attend?
60.---Hey, there is the Wire! Now, if only I could catch up to what's being shown now...
Oh, I'm sure no one's intending to be mean to real people.
But the thing is -- which I think you recognize -- that most of 'do I look okay? am I horrifically fat?' results from just looking at the images, and knowing that the models are airbrushed genetic freaks does little to reduce that feeling. The image is just too strong.
I think it's very very difficult not to make the media image your internalized norm of what people look like
I guess I just disagree. It doesn't seem difficult to me at all. I have been known to look at and comment critically on celebrity looks, but there are plenty of women I know in real life who look nothing like the celebrity ideal who I think are very attractive.
Probably worth noting that I think 61 and 64 are making very different points, because it seems to me much harder to resist the power of the images when one is comparing oneself to them. So I basically agree with 64, but not with 61.
I have been known to look at and comment critically on celebrity looks, but there are plenty of women I know in real life who look nothing like the celebrity ideal who I think are very attractive.
I think this describes me, too, but I'm not sure your explanation is correct. I not aware of a sense of "appropriate" judgment for a given set of circumstances. Rather, I just am inclined to find people attractive for all sorts of bizarre and often unrecognized reasons, including availability. I think most people tend to create justifications for the attraction after the fact, and I wouldn't put money on how well those justifications match the actual reasons that they are attracted to Person X.
I guess I just disagree. It doesn't seem difficult to me at all. I have been known to look at and comment critically on celebrity looks, but there are plenty of women I know in real life who look nothing like the celebrity ideal who I think are very attractive.
Ogged types so I don't have to. Good job dude.
I don't think it's possible to really keep those separations in mind.
I disagree, LB. I see all those images just as much as anybody else, and yet I still spend all day at work marvelling at how many beautiful women work here and trying to develop my peripheral vision.
I do think that the images are more powerful when compared to oneself, but I can't believe that discussing attractive celebrities or looking at pictures of them doesn't skew one's perceptions at all.
Anecdotal case in point: until two or so years ago, I regularly got carded at movies. One of these times I was with a friend, and I complained that there was no way I looked like any 18-year-old. She pointed out that I looked like a normal 25-year-old, but that normal 18-year-olds were so rare on television that our internal sense of what is '18' is skewed upward by about 5 years. (Didn't you say somewhere, ogged, that women above age 25 weren't attractive unless they were athletes? Doesn't that seem skewed?)
70: Actually, he linked approvingly to John Derbyshire saying that. (Being an athlete gets you an extra five years.)
65, 67, 68, 69: Yeah, the problem from my point of view is trying to work backward from what assholes say to what other men think. Assholes (oh, say, like Derbyshire) are fairly open about saying that women who don't meet the 'media image' standard are distasteful. It's hard not to listen to that and believe that non-asshole men aren't simply being polite when they don't say similar things. But it's just as likely that non-assholes genuinely react differently.
(Not that I don't believe that men are genuinely attracted to average looking women; in the assholes, there seems to be a "Sure, I'd like to fuck her, but that doesn't mean she still isn't kind of repulsive" attitude.)
until two or so years ago, I regularly got carded at movies
Hahahahahaha!!
Sorry, couldn't resist. (I'm not sure the example is very helpful, because places that card err far on the side of caution--which is why some of them have "if you look under 30, you're going to be carded" signs. You might be right about the age-skewing, though.)
Didn't you say somewhere, ogged, that women above age 25 weren't attractive unless they were athletes?
I most certainly did not. I said that bodies, when taken as objects for titillation, looked best between the ages of 15-25, but explicitly said that that didn't mean other bodies couldn't be attractive.
I didn't think intent was one of the elements; I thought there was a strict liability standard.
(Didn't you say somewhere, ogged, that women above age 25 weren't attractive unless they were athletes? Doesn't that seem skewed?)
I thought it was Derbyshire that said that -- I can understand confusing him with -gg-d I guess.
71: Yet when we try to reassure you by grabbing your ass at the office as you walk by, we get in trouble. Truly, men are teh oppressed!
I'm happy to accept that guys distinguish between celebrities-to-ogle and real-people. *But* I don't think that the issue is just whether or not media images teach viewers to have unrealistic expectations. Let's say that only happens to women.
What the images do to guys, I think, is condition them to think that ogling is a perfectly fine and okay thing to do. After all, it's just a picture, or a celebrity: it's *there* to be stared at and assessed. Only doing this all the time makes it seem like a pretty normal thing to do; everything from the "everyone does it" argument to the "I do it to images, but I think a lot of the real women I know are hot" explanation still demonstrates a sense that asessing women on the hot or not scale seems like an okay (someone is going to pipe up immediately after I post this and say natural) thing to do.
Which, you know, is a fucking pain in the ass. Even if you score high, it's a game that it would be really nice not to have to play.
the problem from my point of view is trying to work backward from what assholes say to what other men think. Assholes (oh, say, like Derbyshire) are fairly open about saying that women who don't meet the 'media image' standard are distasteful.
Yeah, there do seem to be a fair number of people who don't seem to distinguish the fantasy from the reality. Christ, remember that CBS poll last year where 22 percent of the respondents said they'd seen or felt the presence of a ghost? Not sure there's anything to be done but shun some people.
72: I've never seen a movie theater with a policy to card under the age of 30, but worse is that on occasion, my sister who is three years younger than I will not be carded, but I will.
On the broader point, the conversation from our perspective goes kinda like this:
Derbyshirish Asshole: God, women above age 20 are just unattractive. Mmmm, who wants to hit that saggy ass. Not me! I heart Lolita!
Non-Assholish Ogged: Well, DA is off by about five years, if we're just talking about things we want to hit. Here are some examples. Let's bring on the perving on Hermione!
Us: God, I know they're talking about celebs, but for crying out loud if a 30-something actress who does yoga and elective surgery isn't attractive enough to be titillating, what chance would I have to be attractive to men?
Chorus of Men (in the style of Gilbert and Sullivan): O the asses of actresses! The asses of the actresses!
N-A Ogged: Really, we're good at separating between the standards for fantasy women and the standards for real women we have a chance with.
Chorus of Men: O the cellulite of the celebrities! Cellu-cellu-celebrities.
Us: We ain't buying that it has no effect because of, oh, advertising.
it's a game that it would be really nice not to have to play
I say this in the spirit of friendship and comity and all that good stuff, but this is just reality-hating. The "naturalness" of looking at members of one's preferred sex in a sexual way strikes me as most like the naturalness of breathing, not the pseudo-naturalness of men's desire to rape women, or whatever the hell the EP people say.
Really, we're good at separating between the standards for fantasy women and the standards for real women we have a chance with.
I really don't want to rehash everything, and, in accord with ogged, it shouldn't be done, but I think it's more than different standards. The two sets of discussions have different purposes. Talking about celebrities and the like is closer to talking about whether the Green Lantern could beat up Batman; at least half of it is just for the conversation.
It's reality hating in the sense that it's *become* natural for men, specifically, to assess pretty much every woman they come across. Women don't do that, or at least my sense is that we don't do it as consciously or deliberately. I mean, of course one notices, in a general way, if a man is "cute," and likewise if he is really shockingly unattractive, but I think that for most women, men are just people that you deal with all the time, and one only thinks "ooh, I could have sex with this person--would I want to?" when one is bored, horny, or the person stands out in some way. Guys, I think, do this a lot more--and I don't think it's so much natural (like breathing) as it is natural in the sense that who wouldn't do it, bombarded by artificially enhanced images that are *designed* to look more attractive than reality, and that frequently are posing in erotic or suggestive ways, and surrounded by actual women who, themselves bombarded by the same images, go to some trouble to enhance *their* sexual attractiveness?
I mean, think about how we shop. If you go into a high-end store, you find more stuff attractive, because it's presented well. If you go into a discount place, the *exact same stuff* looks ratty, because it's not lit or presented as nicely. You don't have a natural desire to buy the stuff; your desires are being excited by being in an environment designed to do that.
O the asses of actresses!
I thought it was accepted fact that guys are much more about visual stimulation than women? I don't think I'm making this up.
The "naturalness" of looking at members of one's preferred sex in a sexual way strikes me as most like the naturalness of breathing,
I don't think this is exactly what B. is objecting to. The problem isn't assessing people as hot, it's rating them as 'hot or not'. Try thinking about Chelsea Clinton, back in the 90's. There was a whole lot of discussion of what a repulsive troll she was, as if it were offensive that someone who wasn't attractive was visible in public. If it were really about the natural human desire to look at attractive people, she wouldn't have attracted significant attention for her looks; so she doesn't do it for a lot of people, neither does Newt Gingrich, but there isn't a lot of attention given to his lack of masculine appeal.
You can look at people you find attractive, so long as you aren't being an asshole about it, and you guys are all grownups, so I assume you aren't. Not a problem. What bothers me about the culture of ogling is the treatment of women generally as if our success or failure at being eye candy for whoever's looking at us was an important fact about us, rather than a matter of the viewer's internal state of mind.
This isn't really well said -- it if makes sense, good, but I have the feeling I haven't put in a way that expresses what I mean.
Cala- everyone at my office is now staring at me after my snarf in re "the asses of actresses".
78--
I'm impressed.
any particular tunes go with that libretto?
(i.e. other than "same old song").
you know, the desire to ogle women may be natural (at least for some? men?), but there is still a lot of variation in standards of when it is okay to act on it.
Compare the desire to burp after dinner. Well-bred people try not to do it in public.
What bothers me about the culture of ogling is the treatment of women generally as if our success or failure at being eye candy for whoever's looking at us was an important fact about us, rather than a matter of the viewer's internal state of mind.
This is a good sentence; I never quite realized that before.
LB- the Chelsea Clinton thing was most offensive because she was also at an "awkward" stage when the media pointed its unblinking eye her way. She turned out OK, and even was considered "hot" enough for People to run that photo of her smooching her boyfriend.
Yeah, my perceptions are definitely skewed. I just got back from the airport, and real people are hideous. They have far too many gadgets too.
I'm totally on board if what's being said is that ogling might be unobjectionable, but a culture of ogling isn't.
89: Sure, she's a perfectly nice looking woman with a lovely smile, who was kind of an awkward teen. I was just pulling her out as an example of someone who got harped on for being not terribly attractive as if that by itself were an offense.
91: I think that's right. No one's asking anyone to stop looking at pretty people when they catch your eye, within limits of polite behavior. As you say, everyone does it. The issue is treating women as if it's their business and obligation to be eyecatching.
84: You're not making it up. However, while accepted *as* a fact, it is not, in fact, a fact. It's largely about the constant training. There's some article floating around called "How to be as Horny as a Guy," or something, and it's quite revealing (and definitely, if you follow the recommendations, makes you way more sexually aware and way more frequent in your hot or not judgments).
I mean, shit. All you have to do is think about it for a few minutes to realize how silly it is to think that men are naturally more attuned to women's looks as sex objects, while women are naturally more attuned to women's looks as competition, and that neither sex pays as much attention to men's looks as they do their bank accounts.
91
well, that would be an easy way to settle the dispute and keep everyone here happy.
IF there were any way to build this kind of complete firewall between an individual's actions and the character of the culture at large.
But there isn't. The individual's actions tend to promote and consolidate the objectionable culture. And whatever is objectionable about the culture at large is at least partly present in the individual action, when it plays a role in furthering that culture.
So I ain't seeing the happy solution.
93: How much of this do you think is a function of (hopefully diminishing) imbalances in economic power? That is, it made a certain (though still wrong) sense to treat women's beauty as the trade for an income stream at one time, but now...what are women supposed to be getting out of the bargain?
95: OTOH, laying blame for a culture at the doorstep of an individual is not only silly, it's counterproductive.
96: I think that's right, that it's largely about differentials in economic power, and that it's diminishing, although not yet close to gone.
I have no access to credible evidence on whether men are more apt to ogle than women are.
But I *have* seen this fact cited widely in Evangelical and born-again tracts on sexual ethics/suppression.
You see, boys are naturally visual blah blah blah. Whereas girls are naturally interested in raising children with a 30-yr fixed mortgage blah blah blah.
I really don't have any view about whether the gender split here is nature or nurture. But I know it is a big talking-point in some circles.
96: Power and status. The hot, sharply-dressed woman executive is a stereotype; the frumpy low-level middle-management chick is another. What's that Melanie Griffith/Harrison Ford movie--Working Girl? Check that one out. Even if you ignore the whole "getting the boy" plot, the importance of looks as a marker of women's power is very clear.
I hate that movie a lot. The older, abrasive, woman who got her professional job by working for it deserves abuse and mockery, and eventual firing; the woman who babytalks and gets her information from the gossip columns gets to be a professional success, because she pleases the men who have the real power. And the older woman gets her comeuppance in explicitly sexualized terms -- "Get your bony ass out of here."
97
"laying blame for a culture at the doorstep of an individual"
at the doorstep of *one* individual? Sure, silly and counterproductive. But I wasn't doing that (it's not like I was saying "it's all *Fred's* fault!")
But laying it at the doorstep of *many* individuals, or everyone, considered individually? Well, where else, in the end?
I mean would you say this about racism? "It's a racist culture, but there's no point in trying to change the racist attitudes of individuals"? Wouldn't you say, instead, that the changing of individual attitudes is necessary and largely sufficient for the changing of the culture?
LB- I have never looked at that movie from that point of view. Sort of like a emale friend whose review of "Fatal Attraction" was "Oh, the one where the guy thinks he can get away with cheating on his wife?"
Men are more susceptible to visual stimulation.
No, not really.
So I ain't seeing the happy solution.
Yeah, I don't really see it either, but maybe with enough Jessica Biel posts, we'll come to some kind of consensus about how best to discuss these things.
(I'm 92% serious about that last sentence.)
Even if you ignore the whole "getting the boy" plot, the importance of looks as a marker of women's power is very clear.
As opposed to the hideous Harrison Ford? It's a movie, B. A movie that's almost twenty years old, a time period over which women have made tremendous strides. Most of us know at least a few v. successful women, and at least in my experience, they aren't notably more attractive than other women. I'm not sure they're less attractive (for some fictive objective version of "attractive," yada yada), but if I were forced to bet, I'd bet that way.
If I were a fabulously wealthy and successful woman, I would take a spa day every couple of months.
I don't know if men are 'naturally' more inclined to be visually stimulated. It would be hard to know how to measure that, or how much that would matter if it were true that from cavemen days men checked figures (THE ASSES OF THE ACTRESSES) and women (O THE BANK ACCOUNT THE BANK ACCOUNT) checked... figures.... because even if it were so, it's probably strongly influenced by culture.
If I were a fabulously wealthy and successful man, I would smoke cigars and eat steak and fois gras all day long.
97: You're not getting what I'm saying, and yes, I'd say the same thing about racism. It's far more productive to make people aware of the broader cultural issues than it is to spend a lot of time fussing about whether you or someone else is, or is not, racist--all that does is feed into the guilt/moral superiority bullshit, which doesn't get anything done.
105: The world doesn't change overnight, and kids that are just entering the workforce now were born when that movie was in the theaters. There is, in fact, research showing that women who are thinner and more conventionally attractive are in much higher positions than women who are fat or unattractive. Anyway, you were asking what's in looks for women nowadays, and that's my answer: even if you don't trade them for a man's money and status, you still benefit from them for money and status of your own.
Bitch- isn't it true that conventionally attractive/ tall with good hair people of both sexes are statistically more successful?
I think it is true -- certainly I know that the tall thing has an effect on men's success. I don't know if there's a gender divide in how much of an effect it has, but there might be -- maybe B. knows.
"Probably worth noting that I think 61 and 64 are making very different points, because it seems to me much harder to resist the power of the images when one is comparing oneself to them. So I basically agree with 64, but not with 61."
I really don't understand some of this discussion. ITs like you guys are all looking at the WRONG channels, like whether people have perfectly flat skin tone or SHINY teeth and hair, as if freckles were a sign of ghastlyness. Those aren't elements of being attractive. And on the right channels, ordinary people and celebrities are basically on the same level of attractivness, which is why guys usually say X who works in accounting is hot, just like Y who was in th e movie they're watching.
There is, in fact, research showing that women who are thinner and more conventionally attractive are in much higher positions than women who are fat or unattractive.
Same for men, IIRC. Same kinds of claims are made about height, generally. I'm not saying that everything's hunky-dory now. I'm saying that a movie from 1988 is less good evidence than the relative attractiveness of some of the v. successful women in place now. I'm sure being attractive helps, but no one I know looks like a young Melanie Griffith.
110: It is, but it's truer for women.
I would guess that it easier for a short, dumpy bald guy to reach CEO status than a woman of the same description.
109
okay, I'll try harder to get what you're saying.
You think one method is "far more productive" than another--do you mean "far more productive of change in individuals' attitudes and in the culture"?
Cause if that's right, then we may not have been disagreeing to begin with.
I was saying that the culture at large isn't going to change until the actions of lots of individuals change. I wasn't taking a stand on the best way to bring about that change.
You are proposing (if I'm following you more closely now), that as a matter of tactics, an explicit emphasis on individuals can actually hinder the change in individuals' actions, whereas an explicit emphasis on culture may actual foster the change in individuals' actions (as well as in the culture at large). One of those unintended consequences deals.
So--yeah. I don't know the best way to bring about the change in individuals. Maybe just talking about the culture will do it, maybe a steady diet of one-on-one hectoring and bullying is the ticket, beats me.
But I do get the feeling that your point was something like "sure, individual attitudes and actions *matter*, but don't say that *out loud*!"
Hardly. I'm a bitch, remember? I do think, though, that for most people talking about the culture leads to personal insights, while hectoring and bullying just gets their backs up.
But I'm all for talking about the culture in ways that sensitive wusses *think* of as hectoring and bullying.
oh sure, you *say* you're a bitch. But that might be tactical as well.
Question is: are you a harridan? A hoyden? A termagent? A shrew and a scold?
I mean, if you've really got the street cred, issues of effectivenesss are sometimes going to take a back seat to just pure visceral *enjoyment* of hectoring, right?
I play around a lot in photoshop. I can't actually look at magazines any more, because I spend the whole time assessing what they've done to the women. It is possible to see a lot of what is done from the end result, if you know how the software works. Dropping shoulders, stretching necks and arms and reducing things are a matter of course, along with blurring. You know that super unfocused skin glow every model on the cover of magazines has? It's from a tool. If you can't see pores or any variation in skin tone but the clothes/jewelry/background is razor-sharp crisp, assume the whole picture is a lie.
Harridan, termagant, and shrew, check. Scold, sometimes. Hoyden, alas, no.
121
and are you keeping up on the harpydom front? I would say you need to buckle down and get serious, but I'm afraid that would be, y'know, individual hectoring. Might backfire.
(yeah, hoyden doesn't belong. I think I'm vaguely remembering a Toni Morrison riff.)
As long as we're linking to photoshop revelations, go also here for a Swedish campaign that revealed before and afters (click on the image to see slide show):
http://demo.fb.se/e/girlpower/retouch/
And also here (mouse over image to see before):
http://homepage.mac.com/gapodaca/digital/bikini/index.html
Glenn Feron also had a great section of before and afters that highlighted his mad retouching skillz, very revealing. Now the portfolio on his site no longer shows the befores, though, and says it's "under construction."
B and LB are doing a great job of explaining how and why this affects women, so I won't go there for now. Suffice it to say I'm pleased with the Dove campaign (as I have been with their whole Real Beauty thing), because it shows (perhaps exaggerates, by some standards, but probably not by much) how very altered the images we see really are.
I don't really like Dove soap, though.
from one of the links off Ezra's page you can get to a photo of John Cusack and toggle the retouching off and on. Very interesting to see what they do to a guy's face.
Link directly? I'm not finding it.
120: Hey, winna, do they do the same thing to men, too? Or, really, could this possibly be an accurate representation of Owens? He looks like he's wearing Clooney's Batman suit.
http://www.fluideffect.com/
then click "portfolio", click "agree", and check "before and after"
and is that Billy Bob Thornton getting a lot of lines removed, too? I'm a little surprised these people agreed to have these shots posted.
125: That is interesting. What I noticed is that they didn't do anything to the shape of Cusak's face -- everything stayed motionless. All they did was smooth out pores and eliminate all the reflections from the lights. He looks more perfect, but his proportions are the same as they were.
Most of the retouching I've looked at today doesn't change the shape of the face. They did shorten one woman's earlobe though.
They appear to reshape the woman's face in the Dove ad.
Well, they reshape and reposition her eyes, at least.
And her forehead, and ber mouth.
The eyes bothered me the most. No wonder I feel like I have beady little eyes.
you see, I'm thinking that some of the gross reshaping of the face (neck etc.) in the Dove ad is specific to the needs of the billboard medium, and viewing from a distance.
The fact that they are not doing that in publicity stills (e.g the Cusack one) might support that.
This is not to deny that "our perceptions of beauty are distorted" and so on. But there may also be some slightly less pernicious stuff having to do with optical errors/illusions etc.
Is it wrong that I'm more bothered by the amount of retouching done to inanimate objects? I'm starting to think that Taco Bell is lying to me.
136: I think I've seen similar morphings for magazine ads (and see winna's 120). The difference might be gender based, but it also might be celebrity rather than anonymous model based: a picture of John Cusak has to look like John Cusak, while no one particularly cares what the particular billboard model looks like, so she can be changed at will.
True. I also think the ad is for eye makeup.
But it's starting to remind of discussions about anorexia in girls who dance or skate or do gymnastics, where the coaches all swear up and down that they never tell the girls they're fat. I have no doubt in some cases that they're telling the truth, but if you're surrounded by reed-thin girls or images all the time, you will begin to internalize that as 'normal.' No guy has to come up to me and say 'You fatass' for me to get the message after viewing 10,000 images of waifish models, that I am too heavy to be considered attractive.
yeah, though the Winslet story is about changing a lot of proportions but keeping it looking recognizable.
Ancient Greek sculptors already knew that when you make big statues that are going to be seen from below, esp. on pedestals, you have to screw around with the proportions in order to get it to look right to the viewer. Plato talks about this at Sophist 235e.
so is it m/f, or celebrity vs. unknown, or near/far viewing, or medium based, or. beats me.
140 "yeah, though" to 138
and "proportions" s/b "young male models"
137. I have had some commercials filmed at my house andI was amazed at what they do to inanimate objects to make them look appealing on TV.
139: I wonder if some of it isn't a function of the rest of what they're selling: if you look a certain way, your life will be immeasurably better in some specified manner. And if you're life isn't that way--as no one's is--then you look for a lack, and they've helpfully already illustrated it to you.
I was looking for that article about how after seeing photos of very attractive women men rated their partners as less desirable. I didn't find it, but I did find this pro- nice guys study:
143: I think you're right, that's part of it.
144: In further exciting news: Snow revealed to be cold, water wet. Tune in next week to find out where bears crap.
These retouching photos are making me reevaluate the my assumptions about the prevalence of plastic surgery among the glitterati. It looks like they're less likely to have a nose job than their photo is to have a paint job.
British TV affects me that way -- while they have pretty people, they don't seem to have the "Only superhumanly pretty people" filter. Watching Coupling, for example, the first couple of episodes I was kind of bemused by the redhead, whose name I can't remember -- she was plain enough, by which I mean only a lot prettier than I am rather than infinitely prettier than I am, that she'd only show up on American TV in a role where her unattractiveness was a plot point.
This is particularly funny if you've ever listened to the commentaries on Coupling, where Stephen Moffat will often remark with bewildered satisfaction that everyone on the show is faaaaar too attractive, and furthermore that this is basically the first time this has ever happened in British TV.
[He's particularly fond of the line "American comedies are about attractive people being witty. British comedies are about ugly people being horrible to each other."]
I'm starting to think that Taco Bell is lying to me.
I have a friend who works in advertising, and she says you would be amazed what all happens to food before it gets photographed. Like, for example, ice cream would start melting immediately under the lights, so pretty much every picture of ice cream you have seen was probably actually Crisco.
'm thinking that some of the gross reshaping of the face (neck etc.) in the Dove ad is specific to the needs of the billboard medium, and viewing from a distance.
The fact that they are not doing that in publicity stills (e.g the Cusack one) might support that.
The problem is one can always think of *some* plausible reason why x, y, or z might be done, other than, you know, The Bad Thing. (Sexism, racism, whatever.) The question is, given that virtually all ads are manipulated, reshaped, revised--and that, after all, publicity stills are as well--don't you think maybe there's something more going on?
The reason a sculptor would change proportions on a statue that will be placed above eye level is that from below, the head is likely to appear too small for the body. The image on the billboard is a headshot, so the problem doesn't arise.
89:
[Chelsea Clinton] turned out OK, and even was considered "hot" enough for People to run that photo of her smooching her boyfriend.
Unfortunately her enhottening is rumored to have been helped along by plastic
surgery -- which, of course, she's also been criticized for. Girl just can't win.
One creepy thing is she was about 13 and Limbaugh was saying the equivalent of "I wouldn't do her".
149: Also, the hamburgers in Burger King ads are raw and coated in shoe polish.
150: I wonder if it's not so much any individual image that's the problem as the incessant parade of images. If I saw only one airbrushed, photoshopped photo for every 100 photos of normal but pretty women, or if I saw one-tenth as many magazine photos, I'd probably be more able to think of such overprocessed ad art as obviously weird, rather than the gold standard for beauty. Aristotelian habituation of fashion? Maybe. But I think that what we think of as 'pretty' is nearly entirely shaped by magazines; some of the current hot stars would have been too manly and muscular to be pretty earlier last century.
(Not as certain one could achieve this effect individually by ignoring fashion mags and ads, as then you're 27 and don't know how to put on makeup, which is another set of issues.)
I remember I cried for an hour after my grandmother pointed out that I looked like Chelsea shortly after my dad & grandpap had been going on about how fugly she was.
152: Not seeing it; she looks the same to me, with some age and styling.
I supposedly look like her too, a remark that never failed to undelight me during that era.
She wasn't at the time. She was an awkward teen. So was I, and it's never fun to hear that people think you look like a person pinned all over the media as unfortunate-looking.
I remember I cried for an hour after my grandmother pointed out that I looked like Chelsea shortly after my dad & grandpap had been going on about how fugly she was.
Christ, that's evil. What was bizarre to me during that whole thing was every image that showed how "ugly" she was looked exactly like the kind of doofy pics anyone could find of themselves at 13. Imagine someone snapping a pic of you every time you left the house at that age. What a nightmare.
And how, to both 160 and 161.
I was really awkward at 13. So awkward in fact, that I think my eighth grade school picture has been burned. When I graduated from high school, we had a graduation party, and like everyone did, we had a collage of all the school pictures culminating in the senior picture. My eighth grade one didn't make the collage, either because my mom was embarassed at how awful it looked, or more charitably, didn't want to embarass me.
Brilliance without a doubt is the key. Subliminal in your face. The message is always the same though: buy my products. Fight the revolution! Be different! Be yourself, just like everybody else. We'll show you how.
Good entertainment with lesson value: Buy me!
Thanks.
Look at the difference between Julia and George. They do things to guys, too, but in an entirely different context and to an entirely different end. If I could find a bigger picture of the cover you'd see that the men still have pores and wrinkles. Julia, on the other hand, looks like she's made of alabaster.
An interesting article about the picture here
