Women’s magazines line the shelves at almost every check-out stand. Their glossy covers promise us articles on how to lose weight, please our man in bed, and the best foods for your body type. They also display gorgeous, almost-flawless women, smiling effortlessly into a camera lense. For decades, these women have portrayed what the American “ideal” is for women, and we’re noticing—whether we consciously recognize it or not.
“Approximately 91% of women are unhappy with their bodies and resort to dieting to achieve their ideal body shape,” says an article on dosomething.org, a website that advocates for many positive changes in society, including the disturbing views on body image. “Unfortunately, only 5 percent of women naturally possess the body type often portrayed by Americans in the media.”
However, awareness in America is rising. We are starting to realize that the fronts of these magazines do not represent a real person. Unfortunately, for many of us, that does not stop us from wanting to look like them. As a mother of four and oh—several years older than I used to be, I am very self-conscious of my body and looks. Being a feminist and proponent of intelligence in a woman, over the heavy makeup and jeweled look, does not stop me from feeling self-conscious and even sometimes sad over my own figure. Most people do not expect a mother of four to be as thin as she was before children, but that doesn’t keep me from wanting it.
In a YouTube video called, “Photoshopping Real Women Into Cover Models,” submitted by Buzzfeed editors, four women express their views on magazine covers, admitting, “It’s a never-ending battle and you know that you can never attain that ideal” and, “It can be hard when you see models and celebrities and you just don’t look the same.”
In the video, all four women talk about their bodies and imperfections. They have always wondered what a flawless body would look like, and agreed to have their hair and makeup done and get their pictures taken professionally.
After the photo sessions, a Photoshopping expert took the pictures and edited them according to industry standards. The images were then shown to the women, and their reactions were not what you would expect.
None of the women liked them.
There were no squeals of joy, just small gasps of shock as each woman looked at a picture that they hardly saw themselves in. “Why would you want to make someone look so different?” one of them asked.
That certainly is the question. In the 21st century, with keen awareness of body image and issues such as anorexia, bulimia, and a myriad of other eating disorders, one would think that media in general and women in particular would be more in tune with what America needs—which is healthier education, aimed at presenting the world with real bodily expectations and norms.
It was heartening to see the women so appalled at their own fixed image. One woman mourned the covering up of her freckles, saying they make her who she is. Another made an interesting observation when she said, “Once someone else has done your makeup, and someone else has done your hair and someone has directed the way your body looks, and then taken away your imperfections . . . then there’s not much left of who you really are.”
Another comment was, “Why would you want to make someone look so different?” Why would we, indeed? If 95% of us really don’t look like that, then why are we okay with publishing mass amounts of such criteria, as though it is something normal and even to be favored?
There is also another incorrect portrayal here, and that is actually in the title—“Photoshopping ‘Real’ Women.” While the images we see on magazine covers and in catalogues are rarely indicative of real women, the fact remains that the pictures start out with real women. The models, no matter how thin or what they go through to get there, are just as much of a woman as I am in my non-90-pound frame. It is obvious that these ladies need to stop being encouraged, with money or anything else, to allow themselves to be changed from who they really are.
One of the women in this experiment said it perfectly: “You have to know that the ideal just doesn’t exist.” The answer lies in us, the women who are affected and see these pictures every day and size ourselves up by them. We need to say, “No more,” to continue the awareness, to demand, both in public and private, to hold ourselves and media to a higher level of honesty. Show us the real woman: skinny, curvy, short, tall, and we will show your ourselves.