BLOGGERS PHOTOSHOPPING THEIR IMAGES.
Ok controversial topic, I've just got to address all the outrage about bloggers photoshopping their pictures.
Of course they do.
Who isn't guilty of pulling in a bulge, straightening out a line or getting rid of a spot (or in my case, a nose bump) before making an image public? I'm honestly really impressed if you can resist doing that, you're a better person than me. I don't have control of my nose bump in real life, but hell if I'm going to let it ruin a picture that I really like without it. Because it seems that sort of the point of the internet is to present the best, most shiny parts of yourself and your life. I'm not saying that's ideal, but it's the way it is. No one posts pictures when they've had a shit day, taken off their makeup and their underwear and are sitting at home feeling lonely and sad and binge eating biscuits in toothpaste stained pyjamas. So of course you want to make the bits you do show look the best you can. Hell, it's why the filters were even invented.
I'm not condoning people making themselves look four stone thinner (Danielle from WeWoreWhat has a tendency to take it a bit too far) and it is obviously bad that people feel that in order to be popular and successful they have to be a certain size or weight. But come on, these girls are known for their images, and are under constant scrutiny. It's understandable that they want to look their best, as this is what makes their blogs and brands more successful.
If you're preparing a post about a lovely new top you've bought, and in all the pictures it's bulged out funny at the side, why wouldn't you tuck it in a bit? If your arm looked fat and (in your eyes, at least) it ruined the overall picture and took attention away from the focus (the clothes, this is probably a fashion blog after all) wouldn't you slim it down a bit? If you had a following of 150,000 people waiting to analyse your every inch, and had experienced how vicious people on the internet can be, it's understandable that you'd preempt the nasty comments by fixing the image a bit. It only takes one thigh bulge for the bile to start rolling in. Everyone has seen Heat's "Circle of Shame" and the internet is riddled with countless articles gleefully posting pictures of celebrities looking terrible without makeup. Is the next step that a magazine cover appears and there's loads of articles about it because the star is wearing make-up? Or Spanx? Or false eyelashes?
It's the same as all fashion shoots and imagery, there's backlash because this cover or that spread has been photoshopped (coughJustinBeiber/KimKardashian), but in a way I feel like the publications are almost reassuring us. It's sort of like "Not even the models are good enough, no one looks like this in real life so everyone needs help to create the perfect image that we want to represent our brand." They're relatively open about the fact that images are photoshopped, and I'm not entirely sure why everyone always seems so surprised by it! Almost every image we see these days is Photoshopped, and I'm pretty used to it by now.
Just take it all with a pinch of salt, and if you don't have a blog yourself to be photographed for, a helping of biscuits.
What are your opinions? Is it just me that thinks this?
