Retouching

I've graduated from Seventeen Magazine to the Cosmopolitan Magazine. I've always thought that the Cosmo was a bit sex- driven and highly hypocritical. In the sense, that they promote healthy lifestyles yet the next page hosts a range of insane diets and extreme methods of attaining beauty. Despite that, I like their varied articles and the lack of corniness that Seventeen Magazine sometimes has.

 The new Cosmo , with Miley Cyrus as their cover girl featured a very interesting article about Reverse Retouching. It is a well- known article that magazines abuse Photoshop on models to create unrealistic images of beauty. 

That is why I love fashion bloggers... They are real, normal people who take great photos without adding or decreasing their weight. I remember a certain Keeping Up With The Kardashians episode whereby Khloe had a issue with her weight and had a near breakdown at a photoshoot because she looked fat. I remember her saying ''I don't even want to look at the photos until they photo shopped '. This is the norm. 

And us mere mortals are left with thousands of beauty products meant for improving ourselves. We look at their bodies, make- up, hair and compare ourselves. I do it as well! Like how can I get such a flat tummy in so much days like she did? Little do I know, that editing of that picture took hours to melt the weight off, to perfect the make- up to luscious-ize the hair. 

The effects of Photoshop has had the reverse effect on Models. And the Cosmo picks up on it. Photoshop is now used to add weight to models who are to thin. This is known as Reverse Retouching. Simply put nobody wins. Non- models are left feeling inadequate, Models are left feeling inadequate. The solution: Bugger all. Realistically, we are not all going to stop reading magazines and start valuing ourselves. We won't be nice to the A- cup, the flat booty, the thin hair. We are women, we won't stop caring. But cheers to celebrities being normal people..

P.S While researching this Britney Spears seems to be the most photo shopped celebrity in the history of photos.