Musician, dancer, and British TV personality Alesha Dixon has recently spoken out against the practice of creating unrealistic and homogenized images of women in the media. Alesha experiences these practices personally as someone who frequently appears on magazine covers. Her BBC3 documentary on the subject, Look But Don’t Touch, goes behind the scenes on this issue, following Alesha in her quest to get a magazine to put her on the cover without photoshopping.
[this video contains auditory language and no subtitles, sign interpretation, or other captioning]
Very interesting video. Yesterday’s news had a similar story, about actress Kiera knightley refusing to have her breasts digitally enhanced for publicity photos for her latest movie “The Duchess” although it was done for her previous film, “king Arthur.”
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,393362,00.html
I’m going to get my teenage daughter to watch this. As a thought experiment, I wonder what it would be like if toxic images, like those in women’s magazines, had to come with a list of digital alterations, in much the same way as the producers of potentially toxic food have to list the ingredients!
In the final analysis, though, images speak louder than words, and I think even our knowledge that images are retouched falls short of the effects they have on self-esteem, etc.
Great post, Jackie!
To Joanne, there will be a post coming soon with some advertising put out by Dove that highlights the ways that media is edited for consumption. In fact, there are a few videos on the campaign for real beauty website that focus on media awareness, including workshop videos and interactive tests for teens. Might be a good thing to check out/ share with her.
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