No Wonder our Perception of Beauty is Distorted

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9 responses to “No Wonder our Perception of Beauty is Distorted”

1. Gloria says:

   October 14, 2006 at 2:28 pm

   That’s fascinating, if a little sad. The Photoshopping was probably the most appalling. Not only “touching up” but actually physically altering her very bone and skin structure.

2. The Lazy Canadian says:

   October 14, 2006 at 4:17 pm

   I dunno, I liked her just fine before the “transformation.” Afterwards… not so much.

3. mrG says:

   October 15, 2006 at 10:00 am

   I think we maybe miss the point with these excerises. It’s like what Carl Jung said about UFO’s and how it is not nearly so interesting whether UFOs exist or not, but how tenaciously we cling to the desire to want them to be real — what I find fascinating about these photoshoppings (and I don’t believe the Lazy Canuck for a second) is the vectors the artist takes attempting to anneal the “source face” into the abstracted “perfected face” because it says something very important, psychologically, about the human perception of face features.

   Consider the famous zen gardens, or the later paintings by Picasso, each of them studies into the neurocognitive reality, extracting essential details from the subject matter, enhancing and highlighting those details, arriving at not an image of stark mundane photographic exactitude, but at an image of seeing our way of seeing, of seeing vision, of seeing the mechanics of the way we humans turn the noise-laden reality of our bare senses into abstracted Platonic forms which we can readily remember and recognize.

   IMHO, criticizing the photoshop artist is as lame a pasttime as criticizing the grammar of the person banging on your door to tell you your roof is on fire. You may not agree with their abstract/extraction of her ‘essential’ features, and the sane response would be to present your own abstract/perfected view of her, but to put a blanket dismissal on the practice or to turn it upside down to assert that every woman is somehow trapped in a game of trying to be her own perfected abstract self is fodder for comic books, not a viable life strategy.

   Thus the woman on the right is every bit the woman on the left, in the eyes of the photoshopper, and in the eyes of all those who find they would rather stare quixotically at the right image while finding it easy to pass the other image by. Those who know that woman on the left, especially those who are close to her, and ok, maybe the lazy canuk too, they probably already see that right-side image on the right every time they look at her.

4. The Lazy Canadian says:

   October 16, 2006 at 8:41 am

   You don’t believe me?

   I simply prefer real people to models and what not; I’ve never found what current fashion claims to be beautiful all that interesting; people tend to look manufactured these days. =\

5. akanett says:

   March 12, 2007 at 11:03 pm

   I am not sur if I am looking at the same girl. But if I am, then we have all been fooled. Concerning the free digital camera, I think it is pretty cool for free.

6. roseofblack25 says:

   October 4, 2007 at 12:13 pm

   We watched the video to this in our media class…we are doing photoshop stuff currently…and yes it is the same girl…just extremely photoshopped, they made her eyes larger, her neck longer, lips larger, shoulders more narrow…and more.

   I think she looked fine to begin with she just had bad skin…

7. tina says:

   October 9, 2007 at 12:10 pm

   not the same women .

8. Boo Radley says:

   October 9, 2007 at 12:27 pm

   No, she is the same woman 🙂

9. Tin Soldier says:

   December 15, 2007 at 3:52 pm

   mrG, Did you photoshop your response? 🙂

No wonder our perception of beauty is distorted

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Comments are closed.

No wonder our perception of beauty is distorted

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Comments are closed.