Debenhams exposes the art of Photoshopping
A body to die for, before...
...and after some dodgy airbrushing
A few years ago when I was working on a fashion magazine, I got forwarded an email. It was two images of the same TV actress, before and after airbrushing. They’d changed everything: from the colour of her skin and bikini to the size and shape of her breasts. Most strikingly, they’d totally changed her body, from fairly slim but quite normal to model-thin and super toned. The person who’d emailed the picture was, it turned out, a staffer on a lads mag, who had sent it to a few friends. I forwarded it on to a few of mine, to show that they shouldn’t always believe what they see in magazines. By the end of the day, everyone in the industry had seen it, and, apparently, the person who originally sent it had been fired.
I tell this story because the pictures attached here won’t be that shocking to anyone who’s worked in the industry, except that it hasn’t actually been done that well. Her left arm looks like it was cut out with blunt scissors, the waist is a little wonky and her right leg appears to be slightly dislocated. To me, the photo on the left is far sexier – what little flesh there is on her bones looks real and touchable, unlike the plastic mannequin on the right.
Even so, plaudits to Debenhams (and you could do a lot worse than shop the swimwear genius Melissa Odabash’s range there) for their efforts in showing that even a perfectly gorgeous girl might still be airbrushed to absurdity in the adverts and fashion shoots you see. But it’s not only about airbrushing.
Who hasn’t felt inadequate in comparison to the models in the Victoria’s Secrets catalogue: how many women are there, really, who are simultaneously that skinny and well-endowed? Well, as it turns out, not that many – and it’s not entirely Photoshop’s doing. Rosie Huntington Whiteley has admitted using good old fashioned chicken fillets to make herself look bustier. That’s the kind of technological advance I can get behind.
