Speaking of being unique and original and true to yourself, I was surfing around on google last night and I came upon these videos showing how pictures of models’ faces and bodies are photo-shopped. I was stunned. I always assumed that these magazine models had their pimples and cellulite airbrushed, but I had no idea that they were actually completely remaking the pictures into a whole new species of something unattainably superhuman. I was astonished at the enlargement of the eyeballs . . . I wonder how much it would cost to have that surgically done in real life.
I have no objection to making something aesthetically more pleasing, but real art must be honest, and this is anything but. Instead of perceiving and celebrating the human condition, this kind of "art" states that to be human is to be substandard. By these standards of beauty, even the Venus de Milo needs a boob job.
This is often turned into a feminist football but it really cuts across sexual lines. There are lots of photoshopped bodybuilders out here as well for me to feel inferior to. The point is, this is not art, it’s a form of psychological bullying. It’s all done for the purpose of selling you something. But no matter how much you buy, while it may move you towards a goal, you will never actually get you there, since such faces and bodies do not exist outside the digital realm.
I remember when I went to Rome and saw all the statues and paintings, and i remembered how how they made me feel somehow different, and I realized that, while Michelangelo purposefully cheated on perspective here and there, overall, his representations of the human body celebrate what it actually is, and make one feel good about one’s body. Converesely, by choosing to edit out reality, American commercial art says we should be ashamed of what we are.
It’s not hard to be unique and original, but to overcome the fear of the implied disapproval of your unique self that comes at you oh so subtly, yet oh so relentlessly every day in these manipulated and manipulative images . . . Not so easy. Hence this blog.
© Justin Locke
