'Impossibly perfect', music video edition
by Jess McCabe // 7 November 2009, 13:36

There's been a lot of awareness raising on use of Photoshop to make women's bodies look impossibly beautiful. But what about in video?
Via Sarah at Uplift!, this showreel advertising work by post-production firm Room demonstrates how much 'correcting' is done to both women and men's bodies and faces in music videos.
You can see it here, or Sarah posted some stills on Uplift!
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earwicga // Posted 07 November 2009 at 16:47
Love it! I find it terribly liberating to see how pics/vids etc. are Photoshoped :)
Tavia // Posted 09 November 2009 at 10:15
I just don't see what's wrong with showing people with no airbrushing what-so-ever. Why have we become so scared of the reality of how people look? Why have the odd wobbly bits (which most people - even the thinnest - have), pores, lines, not-quite-so-white teeth become so scary? It's gotten to the stage where we've forgotten what a non-airbrushed person looks like! Take the glorious Daily Mail for instance - they get their knickers in a real twist if a 'celeb' so much as shows a hint of celulite, and use highly edited, airbrushed pictures alongside to illustrate how said celeb has 'let themselves go'. Some people are 'correcting' themselves with surgery to look like these airbrushed ideals. It's almost as if the airbrushed, post-edited images of people are seen as 'normal', with natural being subnormal.
For those who support the use of airbrush, why not go all the way and just use 100% computerised images for music videos, adverts, magazines, etc?
Ha, rant over. Thanks for the links too!
Melanie // Posted 09 November 2009 at 12:43
I know this isn't really the point, but am I the only person who thinks both these people look better before the "correction"?
Rita // Posted 09 November 2009 at 14:48
This world has become so artificial that it is becoming scary. You have to a certain shade, size, height etc... None of these magazine cover models are 100% natural. You have people who have hair perfected extensions advertising hair products hence giving a self impression, people with fitted veneers advertising toothpaste, but only because their face fits, not the teeth actually. What annoys me most about this airbrushing is when they make women lose their curves. What is so unattractive about curves? I just do not get it at all.
It saddens me to see 9 year olds going to school full of make up, dressed in high heels (like grown women). That's what this airbrushing is doing to the young generation. Sad
Kiri // Posted 09 November 2009 at 20:31
Thanks for this! Keep raising the awareness because if we carry on this we'll forget what people really look like and keep pushing people into "acceptable" little boxes.
Kit // Posted 10 November 2009 at 14:45
Great video :)
I find it so weird, in real life video they're using computers to wipe out wrinkles and pores etc. but in CG people they're putting them in to make characters look more realistic.
Weirder still, airbrushed women at least are starting to look "normal" to me. It was hard to tell when watching the film Surrogates which women were the plastic perfect "surrogates" (until they showed someone who wasn't one), because they look exactly like airbrushed/photoshopped women look everywhere else! The men were very obvious, though I don't know it would be the same in future.