Airbrushing: not the root of all evil
{
Date Posted:
May-10-2010 12:09
49
}
The recent trend of featuring airbrush-free models and celebrities on the cover of women’s magazines is spreading like wildfire, with some publications even pushing the issue so far as to feature makeup-free cover girls.
While we appreciate that the intention is to empower women and promote positive body image – here at FHM we also strive to feature strong, confident women – we can’t help but wonder if things are getting a little out of hand. What’s next? The “no personal grooming at all” movement? Sarah Murdoch on a cover after not washing her hair or bathing for a month?
The no-makeup idea is cute, but it’s a gimmick. Seriously, how many women do you know who are prepared to face the world without makeup? It’s not like we evil, nasty men force them to wear it; in fact, we’d give our right nut to get back all those hours spent sitting on the couch watching Ab-Tastic infomercials while the missus applies the amount of war paint she considers necessary to walk to Blockbuster to rent a movie.
And while we agree that women shouldn’t be sliced, diced and tweaked in Photoshop until they’re virtually unrecognisable, is smoothing a wrinkle or evening a model’s skin tone really that big a deal? How different is that to wearing a flattering colour or getting a haircut or using fake tan? Every day we do things to artificially augment or improve our natural appearance.
Besides, most women, in our limited experience, don’t buy magazines to look at everyday people. They buy them to look at the beautiful people and, more often than not, bitch about them, speculate about the existence or otherwise of surgical enhancements and, yes, laugh about how much airbrushing has gone on.
Perhaps we should be giving readers a little more credit.
What do you think? Has the anti-airbrushing campaign gone too far?
Related links:
FHM's 100 Sexiest Women in the World 2010
Celebrating epic catwalk falls
Supermodels now & then