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Last week I wrote a post about the importance of sending out the right type of body image messages, and the equal importance of the repetition of those messages. In the post, I mentioned a campaign I had created: Show Our Beauty: A Challenge to Women's Magazines. The response has been unbelievable.
After a post on Jezebel and it's sister site Gawker, almost 900 people have joined. Almost 900 people who want to see what a woman really looks like on a magazine cover. Not everyone responded positively; one woman blogger berated the campaign from taking the spotlight away from other more important issues. (See what she said here.)
My response? People want to know they can help. They want to make a difference! But not everybody knows exactly how to make that difference or has the resources to donate. The "Show Our Beauty" campaign gives people an outlet - their participation is minimal (buy two issues of a magazine supporting something they believe in) for a big payoff (getting national attention focused on the unhealthy body images and media perceptions of females).
Most other responses have included words of support, graditude and links and stories that shed further light on the somewhat shady world of photo-retouching. I'm listing some of the best here.
- A New Yorker Article on Pascal Dangin, one of the top photo re-touchers in the world. Not only does he boast three houses and an Aston Martin for his work, the publishers don't mention him in any credits in magazine. His work is referred to as clandestine, why?
- The website This Looked Shopped features some really eye-opening articles and videos that show just how ingrained photo-retouching is in the world of the modern media, and how unaware we can be of it.
- A friend directed me to the work of Lauren Greenfield. Her photography captures a lot of what I'm unable to articulate in some of these blog posts and emails.
So to those who haven't joined the fight, please do and send it on to friends and family. The more people involved, the more likely a magazine is to respond to our challenge. For anyone that wants more information, feel free to contact me at clare[dot]ondrey[at]gmail[dot]com. Hopefully we can keep the momentum going for this campaign and show women everywhere that they need not strive for perfection, because it does not exist except on the covers and in the pages of photo-shopped magazines.
