Wednesday, July 15, 2009

PHOTOSHOPPING GONE MAD: THE SKINNY ON THE FAKE & REAL IMAGES OF MODELS ON THE INTERNET...[UPDATED]

Fake

Real

Below are just some of the comments I've received on this post from readers...

"Anonymous said...

Great Blog Medusa...keep it up!

I'm sorry to say that some of these pictures have the wrong Fake and Real tags attached to them.

I don't know where they came from, but aside from the "few" that look like they came from tabloids/rags,Perez-type who would want to over emphasize the headline..."Looks who dying of anorexia!", most of these are backwards. I am in the Fashion industry, and am involved with "photoshopping" the images and I know for a fact that the very sad fact is that most models, famous or not are horribly anorexic. We have to go in and airbrush OUT the rib-bones and round out their arms and legs to make them look more normal and even toned, or no one would buy the clothes/jewelry/Designer if they saw the real model. Look at your comments....no one wants to buy the stuff on the anorexic models, but the ones called Real, will sell. They are fake.

Go back up and look at these examples:

--If you look at the girls having a water fight, the "real" image posted is actually the fake...it's the final printed article with the copy already placed in the upper right. The fake was the the first unretouched shot.

--For the girl boxing, you can see that the "real" pic is actually the retouched fake one. See the bikini wasn't silver enough, and they made it much more bright silver and bigger, along with the high heels.

--One of the first photos...the girl on the catwalk in the cut-out white outfit, the "real" one is the "fake". See how in the second, they made the fabric a perfect square and a perfect white and moved the fabric around?

The awful, sad reality is that those models are REAL, and DYING everyday from anorexia. The "Brands" cannot sell clothes of women who unfortunately look like Holocaust victims, so we add enough curves and cleavage, and of course make the CLOTHES look great in order to sell the items.

I would redo this section to show how the ugly tabloids do the disgusting "skinny" photoshopping, but the "Advertisers/Retailers" HAVE to make the models look better and with a little bit more curves...certainly NEVER rib cages showing..

This article will have HUGE effect if all the girls/women out there can actually see how horrible their model idols look in reality without us going in there to add fat and curves to make them appealing. Yes, those thin models that people envy are starving themselves, but because they are popular, they get the jobs, and we retouch almost everything about the pictures. We even change necks, and legs and arms from one model to another. Nothing is impossible nowadays. I remain anonymous to not giveaway who I am, but I have worked on photos of all the models, including a ton of Victoria Secret's models, and most of them have ribs very pronounced and elbows huge compared to their upper arms...so we fix it. Every protruding "bony" body part is rounded out.

If you would like my professional opinion on how these tags need to be changed, please feel free to post and somehow we can talk.

July 15, 2009 7:47 PM"


A response to Anonymous:


"Anonymous said...

It's funny how easily people believe things, isn't it?

Look at the girls playing with the water. The anonymous post said the real photo was the one with more protruding bones, and the fake one was the final shot with the captions on it.

Am I the only one who hasn't noticed that this "real", according to anon, photo is conveniently cropped so as not to include those captions?

hmmmm... Let's apply some critical thinking skills here, shall we? Yeah models are terribly skinny and anorexia is a serious problem in the industry, but sensationalism is not the solution.

July 18, 2009 9:29 PM"


And another response:


"Anonymous said...

I think the funny thing about these pictures is that the ones where the models are "fleshed out" are still grotesquely skinny women. Also, if you look at some of them, such as the one of the girls boxing, not only is the caption cut off at the exact right area, it's also a shot of Karolina Kurkova. We all know what she looks like, she is NOT that emaciated. I actually use photoshop to retouch my own photos, and not that I've ever used it to make people look thinner, but I've used it to cut out objects, erase flyaway hairs in people's eyes, and things of that nature. I have to say, I'm not entirely convinced of anonymous' conclusion... some of these are quite obviously retouched to make the models emaciated, all you have to do is look up other photos of the same models, such as Karolina Kurkova.

That said... in alot of them, there isn't all that much difference between the two, throw in a few ribs and sinewy muscle, and you've got an anorexic.

Unfortunately, the actual size of the woman stays much the same. Scary."


And another:


"Delirium said...

the person who wrote to you saying that the tags of fake and real were wrong is clearly incorrect. The faked ones (i.e most of the superskinny ones) are photoshopped. Badly.

Sorry, but it's obvious which are. The work is poor.

I'm a graphic artist. I can see bad photoshop a mile off.

Sorry.

P.S Like this blog. :)"


After receiving the first comment above from Anonymous, I removed all the "fake" and "real" tags on the photos, but have since added them back.

Your thoughts on the photos?


MY ORIGINAL POST:

The Internet is rife with photoshopped images of skeletal models. Unfortunately, many young girls cruising the Internet, who aspire to have stick-thin figures like the models in the images they see, begin deadly starvation diets, not realizing that the pictures of many of these models have been photoshopped...and some drastically.

Here are just a few examples of these photoshopped pictures...


Fake

Real


Fake

Real


Fake

Real


Fake

Real


Fake

Real


Fake

Real


Fake

Real


Fake

Real


Fake

Real


Fake

Real


Fake

Real


Fake

Real


Fake

Real


Fake

Real


Fake

Real


Fake

Real


Fake

Real



Be careful out there. Sometimes things are not what they seem...






Links:
Google images
http://jeanluc.croix.free.fr/

Follow on Buzz

27 comments:

Anonymous said...

What's scary is how many of the "real" ones are not all that different to the freakish unnatural fakes.
A lot of those models are so horribly thin already!

Medusa said...

Josie, isn't that the truth?

Most of the real photos are just as scary as the photoshopped ones.

Anonymous said...

Fat girls in the old fat acceptance movement are jealous.

Anonymous said...

But why would they want to Photoshop pictures so that you can see bones? What's the point? Those girls look sickly.

By the way, I'm doing a project on modeling and anorexia and your blog is very helpful. Keep up the good work :)

acidburn666 said...

who would fake pictures like this, knowing that girls are going to believe they are real? thank you so much for this site Medusa, I am armed with so much more info about eating disorders than I could ever have been without you and having three teenaged girls, I feel much more abled to step in quickly if I see any signs of them turning towards an eating disorder. don't ever stop posting...I imagine alot of people would miss out if you did.xx

acidburn666 said...

who would fake pictures like that, knowing that girls are going to believe they are real? thank you so much for this site Medusa, I feel that I am better armed with info so that I can read any signs of an eating disorder my 3 daughters may show.don't ever stop posting... I think alot of people will benefit from you.xx

Medusa said...

acidburn666, thanks so much for your lovely comments. Much appreciated.

Medusa

jules said...

wow, these pics are messed up. i actually have a lot of the fake ones saved as my thinspo bc i thought they were real

Fat Bastardo said...

Obese women really are hideous and they know it. There is no other way to say it. Fat acceptance is comprised almost entirely of jealous and angry fat girls. Fat acceptance is anti diet so the distort images of thin and normal women just was the distort medical realities. Often they tell outright lies.

Read some fat acceptance blogs and you will see what I mean.

Jealousy makes people do some very irrational things.

Anonymous said...

Unfortunately it is not necessary to believe that the (faked) pics were "real". It´s enough that it looks(!) like it could be the reality. I know most of the pictures you´ve posted, and I know that they´re photoshopped. I don´t know how to explain because my English is so bad that it´s good ...
It´s not always the reason to become thin and beautiful why people get anorexic, I´m quite skinny, too, but it´s because I want to be ugly enough so that nobody would abuse or hurt me again in any way. I became a bit weak in the last few weeks but now I´ve found help after more than 13 years searching for help. I´ve got to recover in my brain but in a different way as people with an ED. In my case it´s DIS, and life becomes too complicated, almost no time left for such normal things like meals and food. However, I want to be "ugly" for other people, so it´s ok if there´s not enough time. Sorry for writing so much in my terrible English. Your blog is really great, please don´t stop posting. Thanks.

Anonymous said...

Great Blog Medusa...keep it up!
I'm sorry to say that some of these pictures have the wrong Fake and Real tages attached to them.

I don't know where they came from, but aside from the "few" that look like they came from tabloids/rags,Perez-type who would want to over emphasize the headline..."Looks who dying of anorexia!", most of these are backwards. I am in the Fashion industry, and am involved with "photoshopping" the images and I know for a fact that the very sad fact is that most models, famous or not are horribly anorexic. We have to go in and airbrush OUT the rib-bones and round out their arms and legs to make them look more normal and even toned, or no one would buy the clothes/jewelry/Designer if they saw the real model. Look at your comments....no one wants to buy the stuff on the anorexic models, but the ones called Real, will sell. They are fake.

Go back up and look at these examples:
--If you look at the girls having a water fight, the "real" image posted is actually the fake...it's the final printed article with the copy already placed in the upper right. The fake was the the first unretouched shot.

--For the girl boxing, you can see that the "real" pic is actually the retouched fake one. See the bikini wasn't silver enough, and they made it much more bright silver and bigger, along with the high heels.

--One of the first photos...the girl on the catwalk in the cut-out white outfit, the "real" one is the "fake". See how in the second, they made the fabric a perfect square and a perfect white and moved th fabric around?

The awful, sad reality is that those models are REAL, and DYING everyday from anorexia. The "Brands" cannot sell clothes of women who unfortunately look like Holocaust victims, so we add enough curves and cleavage, and of course make the CLOTHES look great in order to sell the items.

I would redo this section to show how the ugly tabloids do the disgusting "skinny" photoshopping, but the "Advertisers/Retailers" HAVE to make the models look better and with alittle bit more curves...certainly NEVER ribcages showing..

This article will have HUGE effect if all the girls/women out there can actually see how horrible their model idols look in reality without us going in there to add fat and curves to make them appealing. Yes, those thin models that people envy are starving themselves, but because they are popular, they get the jobs, and we retouch almost everything about the pictures. We even change necks, and legs and arms from one model to another. Nothing is impossible nowadays. I remain anonymous to not giveaway who I am, but I have worked on photos of all the models, including a ton of Victoria Secret's models, and most of them have ribs very pronounced and elbows huge compared to their upper arms...so we fix it. Every protruding "bony" body part is rounded out.

If you would like my professional opinion on how these tags need to be changed, please feel free to post and somehow we can talk.

Medusa said...

Wow, Anonymous, thanks so much for taking the time to post.

Your comments are so valuable and important,I am going to add your post to the beginning of mine.

How sad it is that these models are starving and even sadder that so many young girls emulate them.

Many thanks again for the heads-up and your excellent post.

~ Medusa

Sustainable Sue said...

To Medusa and the updater "Anonymous"

My question is, why not just get HEALTHY models to do the shoots and then Photoshop them skinnier if they want them to "loose pounds" in certain spots?? I have worked with Photoshop and it is just as easy to use the Liquify editor to make someone appear skinner, as it is to appear fatter. It just makes no sense to drive the industry into that direction when it's unnecessary. I will understand why it's done on the runway, designers only make clothes in a certain size but for shoots? come on.

Anonymous said...

This is just sad. Very, very sad. There are so many things in the modeling industry (and "Western" society) that are so disturbing. :(

Anonymous said...

It's funny how easily people believe things, isn't it?

Look at the girls playing with the water. The anonymous post said the real photo was the one with more protruding bones, and the fake one was the final shot with the captions on it.

Am I the only one who hasn't noticed that this "real", according to anon, photo is conveniently cropped so as not to include those captions?

hmmmm... Let's apply some critical thinking skills here, shall we? Yeah models are terribly skinny and anorexia is a serious problem in the industry, but sensationalism is not the solution.

lonelyheroine said...

Hmmm. Medusa, may I ask what happened to my comment that I posted several days ago regarding the pictures of Nicole Richie? Did I do or say something wrong? All I said was that the ultra-skinny bikini picture of Nicole was totally fake. If she really was that emaciated, she wouldn't be able to run and frolic on the beach. I have never seen another photo of her that's even remotely as gaunt as the one posted.

Please let me know why I'm not allowed to have an opinion here. I used "anonymous" because I hadn't created a profile, but I noticed other anonymous commenters had their posts posted here. Strange. I did mention I was a recovering anorexic and exercise bulimic, but maybe we aren't allowed to do that. I dunno.

Medusa said...

lonely heroine, I have just returned from a business trip to Boston and have just now published all comments posted on all my blog posts.

I did not receive your comment re Nicole Richie. Would you please re-submit it?

Many thanks.

Medusa

Medusa said...

Good points, paralegal survivor guide.

Anonymous said...

OMG! that completely changes everything! Its also true that they should hire healthy models in the first place probably cheaper and much easier.

Anonymous said...

I think the funny thing about these pictures is that the ones where the models are "fleshed out" are still grotesquely skinny women. Also, if you look at some of them, such as the one of the girls boxing, not only is the caption cut off at the exact right area, it's also a shot of Karolina Kurkova. We all know what she looks like, she is NOT that emaciated. I actually use photoshop to retouch my own photos, and not that I've ever used it to make people look thinner, but I've used it to cut out objects, erase flyaway hairs in people's eyes, and things of that nature. I have to say, I'm not entirely convinced of anonymous' conclusion... some of these are quite obviously retouched to make the models emaciated, all you have to do is look up other photos of the same models, such as Karolina Kurkova.
That said... in alot of them, there isn't all that much difference between the two, throw in a few ribs and sinewy muscle, and you've got an anorexic. Unfortunately, the actual size of the woman stays much the same. Scary.

Ingrid said...

Having spent time on an eating disorder forum, I've encountered someone who does this kind of sick photoshopping. He "skinnified" pictures of celebrities and as an occasional treat would skinnify a picture of a member of the forum. A substantial part of the forum appreciated his skills, asking him to skinnify themselves or participating actively in conversations about who this Omar guy was going to photoshop next.

Aside from eating disorder sufferers, these pictures are also enjoyed by the segment of "normal" people who have a kinny fetish. They often frequent ED boards to find pictures of thin women to wank to, but also revered Omar's skills.

Delirium said...

the person who wrote to you saying that the tags of fake and real were wrong is clearly incorrect. The faked ones (i.e most of the superskinny ones) are photoshopped. Badly.

Sorry, but it's obvious which are. The work is poor.

I'm a graphic artist. I can see bad photoshop a mile off.

Sorry.

P.S Like this blog. :)

pikkolastellasenzacielo said...

ehm ehm. any of those top models are DEATH for anorexia, then any of those photos aren't fake.

Anonymous said...

are you all COMPLETLY RETARDED? the pic with the girl walking in front of the "sweetface" banner is clearly JENIFFER LOPEZ and the last girl with the bodyguard is BEYONCE. come on. WE ALL KNOW WHAT THESE LADIES LOOK LIKE EVERYDAY.what are u saying that every paperazzi also edits extra flesh onto these high profile starlets, instead of just reaping the benifits of exposing these womens disease for a bit of extra cash lololol im readin these posts and apart from a few educated folk, i see that ur all totally buying this drama.
WAKE UP LADIEZZ

Anonymous said...

@anonymous: Yes, probably everybody who knows Beyonce and Jennifer Lopez can see them on the pics you mentioned. Add fat or remove fat ... the only retarded thing is to think that it´s just about pics.

Hyl said...

I've been struggling with anorexia since I was 14; bulimia since I was 16; and it's still a major issue for me today, and I'm 23. Over the years, ALL of these photographs have made it into my "thinspo" notebook, the notebook I have that makes me sick to claim, but is one of those things my illness will not allow me to get rid of.

Some of them - the photo of Beyonce or J-Lo, I knew from the start were obviously photoshopped. But the older I got and the more I became familiar with Photoshop myself, I realized that they all were. I didn't really think about them being fake until now, when I seen the real photographs in comparison.

I agree with Josie; some of the real photographs are not much of an improvement.

Rosy Omeje said...

Exactly!! Most people looking up to these models are already doing worse just to attain this level of 'perfection'..
Something really needs to be done!