Tuesday 15 November 2011

Reality vs Plastic

We are surrounded by photoshop, and that can lead to several problems for teenagers, including eating disorders.

Dove is trying to make people realize that the beauty standards today are artificial and unrealistic, and the average woman has no chance of meeting them. If you criticize the model because she doesn't fit the artificial, unrealistic standards, you are missing the point. So yes, unfortunately, that’s how beauty industry works. At the start of the video we can see a beautiful woman. After the photoshop and the editing, we can see a pathetic plastic girl.

What do you think about our plastic world?

Andrea Díaz-Varela Vargas

7 comments:

  1. Well, that's an eye-opener. I never thought that you could so skillfully manipulate the image of a person. But even if you remove the Photoshop part, the woman looks much better after having her makeup put on and getting her hair done, which also seems unnatural.

    I believe beauty is in being natural, and even then beauty is in the eye of the beholder. At the end of this lengthy process,she ends up looking a lot better but you can tell that it's fake. She ends up looking like any other of the millions of barbies we see on a daily basis in movies and on magazine covers, and I believe that if someone is truly beautiful, they don't need any of this. It seem quite sad, really.

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  2. Here's another video that takes the message of the first one a little further: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ei6JvK0W60I

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  3. I’m impressed in how beauty and clothing industry can retouch an image so quickly and with such drastic changes. Actually, it is not only an image, they have tweaked every single detail that makes up the model: her eyes, neck, eyebrows, lips, cheekbones… making a completely renewed version of the lady, creating, like Jai says, a Barbie.
    To begin with, these commercials should be banned or at least controlled by a law, since there are cases of 12 year old girls that are contracted and paid to dress, makeup and look like an older woman. What image, what vision, what belief are we giving to the adolescence of our time? The girls are often more affected than the opposite gender, they feel more related to the ladies in great costumes and incredible bodies. How must they feel if they think that they are never going to achieve the level of beauty the models emerge? There are plenty of cases of eating disorders caused by a variety of adverts and images fashion brands portray.
    As Jai said, valid beauty is found in the interior, reality is found beneath our skin, it isn’t enough with manipulating with informatics programmes the appearance because in fact that woman has the same name, the same eye colour, the same colour skin and the same cheekbones, she remains the same in real life but with a counterfeit materiality added.
    In my opinion, there should exist some adverts that value someone’s character, he’s way of being and inner beauty.

    Susanna Balaguer Serra

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  4. From my point of view this video is so impacting, it is unbelievable what a now our day’s a computer programme can make with a simple image.
    It is shocking to see how beauty industry works, how consumers are been lied constantly, persuading them to use a special cosmetic item so they can achieve to look like this woman who really is a fake image, she does not really exist with this appearance!
    This video makes me think if beauty is really a natural fact? Do we really want to end up looking so artificial? Honestly, if society works like this, we have to start to think if this is really beneficial for us. I mean, people who are not comfortable with their natural appearance and day by day have to deal with the situation of seeing constantly pictures in everywhere they go of women or men of incredible beauty, don’t you believe they will end up coming down to the point of becoming depressed?
    Marina Segura

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  5. I love the way in which this brand (Dove) makes their costumers feel good by showing reality.
    I have the same opinion as dove does, I can´t find beauty in stick-legged anorexic models, but I clearly see it in dove models.
    Moreover, I think that the evolution in technology and in the woman's face is amazing. With a simple click, a woman can be converted into being amazingly beautiful when she was before quite normal

    -Paulina

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  6. I have to say, this video is fantastic. Isn’t it amazing what technology can do? But what I don’t understand is why we need to create a picture of a girl who’s simply too pretty to be true? What’s the point?

    I think that the fact that brands are found of using this is our fault since we buy brands that look for idealistic models. Moreover, the more they make us think we have to be similar to that model the more we buy that product. Isn’t that ironic?

    It seems as if we all want to be the same, we want to be similar to an image we will never be, and we are trying to create uniformity. However, in my opinion, it is fine to be different; what’s more, what would the world be if we would all be the same? Furthermore, I believe that it is what makes us different that makes us truly special. Just as Karl Lagerfeld said, "I don't like standard beauty - there is no beauty without strangeness".

    You have to accept how you are, realizing that everyone has their own virtues, making the most of yours, and if the others aren’t capable of looking into your inside and realizing how pure your heart is then they are not worth being with you. We have to look into the people’s interior and into their heart and set aside any beauty schemes’ prejudices. Just as Confucius said, "everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it".

    What is beauty? Is beauty really the package or the product? Is it the outfit or the heart? Do you get bored of a lovely face, does it stay lovely forever? Do you get bored of a lovely person, do they stay pleasant forever? The answers to these questions are pretty simple, you might get bored to death form a lovely face but you will never from a person whose heart is pure and whose intentions are innocent.

    So, I still don’t understand why we give so many importance to exterior beauty. Maybe the problem is, just as George W. Russell said, that "our hearts are drunk with a beauty our eyes could never see".

    Daniel Casas Bofarull

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  7. First of all I wanted to say that both videos are just incredible, they made discover that we are surrounded by lies. Why do they have to modify natural beauty? I am completely against these fake images all around us; we can’t be who we really are because of society’s criticisms, and this video shows how our world works these days, we are all transformed into false people because we want to be “beautiful” just like those thin models, made out of plastic.

    I personally don’t like the fact that being thin and covered in makeup is the way you have to be to be pretty, because this is an image society has created, and with this, personality has been left apart and nowadays people can’t see what’s inside a person, they only see their appearance, and they judge you if you are different.

    I can’t see beauty in that at all, these days their physical is the most important part of a person, and this can cause serious problems and diseases because we are affected by all those ads showing thin, tall women and mostly girls want to be like them and they start to damage their own body to become a “fantastic new girl”.

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