Art Without Artifice

Four out of five women in the United States are unhappy with their appearance.

The media take advantage of this fact to suit their purposes, targeting us for our insecurities, our vanity, and our need to please the men in our lives and compete with our fellow women. And we are easy targets. Advertisements have been shaping the idea of perfection for as long as there have been products to sell.

It starts with fashion models. Actually, it starts with the average American woman being 5’4” tall and weighing 140 pounds. It escalates with the fact that the average model stands seven inches taller than the average woman and weighs 30 pounds less. It climaxes at the point an editor takes a photograph of an already gorgeous woman and erases the wrinkles, blemishes, and flaws that make her human.

The techniques have changed much over the years. In the earlier days of marketing, perfection was manipulated with lights and angles. Retouching was done with a paintbrush instead of a computer. Since then, Adobe Photoshop has become a common tool. And though retouching existed long before the program was invented over 20 years ago, the true consequences of the practice have been coming to light in those two decades with a sharpness that cannot be airbrushed away.

Nearly 50 percent of girls aged 3 to 6 are already worried about their weight. Up to 24 million people in the U.S. suffer from an eating disorder of some kind, regardless of age or gender. Of those, 95 percent are between 12 and 25.8 years of age. Anorexia is the third most common chronic illness among adolescents, and 20 percent of those adolescents will die prematurely from complications related to their illness, from suicide to heart conditions.

Of course, these heartbreaking statistics could be considered irrelevant to marketing as a whole. Or at least, they could have been up until 1997, when Harrison and Cantor published their findings that connected consumption of media that depicts and promotes thinness with the development of eating disorder symptomatology in college women. The study was recreated in 2000 with the same result. As of 2006, nearly 70 percent of girls from 5th through 12th grade say that pictures in magazines affect their idea of beauty, and 47 percent are inspired to lose weight because of them.

In 2009, an American Journal of Psychiatry study found that the mortality rates for eating disorders have increased to 4 percent for anorexia nervosa, 3.9 percent for bulimia nervosa, and 5.2 percent for other unspecified eating disorders, making eating disorders the deadliest of all mental illnesses.

It has been apparent for some time that advertising is killing us, slowly but surely, with unattainable standards for beauty, not just by photographing impossibly thin women to sell products, but also by using programs like Photoshop to stretch their bodies ever thinner and ever smoother.

The problem has not gone unnoticed. In 2011, the American Medical Association updated their policy on body image and advertising to youth. The AMA adopted a new policy to discourage advertising associations from altering photographs to propagate impossibly thin standards, especially in publications targeted at teens.

“We must stop exposing impressionable children and teenagers to advertisements portraying models with body types only attainable with the help of photo editing software,” said AMA Board Member Barbara L. McAneny, M.D. in the release.

Even the fashion industry acknowledges its responsibility to protect the young women it employs. Though the Council of Fashion Designers of America will not take full responsibility, they are committed to sending the message that beauty is health. “Although we cannot fully assume responsibility for an issue that is as complex as eating disorders and that occurs in many walks of life, the fashion industry can begin a campaign of awareness and create an atmosphere that supports the well-being of these young women,” state the CFDA Health Initiative Guidelines, released in 2007.

For some, guidelines are not enough. In March 2012, the Israeli parliament passed legislation that regulates Photoshop usage in advertising and media. Not only that, but the law forbids the photography of underweight models for advertising. A doctor must measure all models to make sure they have a Body Mass Index (BMI) of 18.5 or higher. This particular standard, which measures body fat based on height and weight, is the World Health Organization’s threshold for malnutrition.

One of Israel’s most prominent photographers and fashion model agents, Adi Barkan, discovered the fashion world’s deadly secret in 1997. He first tried to change the industry from the inside. He built a campaign to raise awareness and founded the Simply You project in 2005. But he quickly realized that approach would not be effective enough.

In 2007, a former model and an old friend of Barkan, Hila Elmalich, died suddenly. She had been battling anorexia nervosa for years and finally succumbed to the disease in early November, weighing only 60 pounds.

“I realized that only legislation can change the situation,” Barkan said in an interview with The Atlantic in May 2012. “There was no time to educate so many people, and the change had to be forced on the industry. There was no time to waste, so many girls were dieting to death.”

For two and a half years, Barkan worked with Rachel Adato, an Israeli parliament member with a background in medicine, to write and pass the legislation that would change the Israeli fashion industry forever, and hopefully save lives in the process.

This is the first legislation of its kind, and it is causing shockwaves both in Israel and around the world. Such laws would be difficult to pass in the United States, due to First Amendment rights that make regulating the media very difficult, even to save lives. But looking closely at the Israeli legislation leads to an important piece that could very well be the tipping point to righting an egregious wrong committed every day by magazine editors and advertisers alike.

The new law requires that any ad that uses any form of Photoshop editing to create a slimmer model must clearly state that fact.

That’s all. Fine print at the bottom of the ad that says quite clearly that the woman in the photograph is not of natural proportions. Hardly revolutionary, and yet, studies show that it is enough.

In 2004, a study published in Race, Gender & Class revealed that such tiny measures were noticed and appreciated by focus groups. Knowing that the images were Photoshopped made the participants more likely to protest the practice to editors and advertisers. But even more importantly, seeing that the images were not real actually significantly increased their happiness with their own bodies.

This image was Photoshopped. Four little words that can negate the deadly effects of the thin ideal and perhaps even save lives.

It becomes apparent that we may not need to change the law to change the media. Armed with the knowledge that the woman in the magazine does not even look like the woman in the magazine, we can take control of our perceptions of beauty.

We might even get a little help from within the industry. In 2004, Dove launched its Campaign for Real Beauty, which produced the viral video “Evolution,” an ad that sat down a perfectly beautiful woman, complete with blemishes and dark circles under her eyes, and transformed her into a billboard model with a makeover, lighting, and quite a bit of digital editing.

“No wonder our perception of beauty is distorted,” the video spells out at the end. Despite the ad’s success in increasing Dove’s brand awareness, it took quite some time before the idea of appealing to women by showing them the truth in modeling and advertising would catch on.

While Dove continues to target women by assuring them of their own beauty, like with their variant of the Body Project called Free Being Me, American Eagle stepped onto the stage in 2014 by offering a real look at the models who display their underwear and lingerie line, Aerie.

Their campaign, Aerie Real, focused on representing reality. “We left everything. We left beauty marks, we left tattoos, what you see is really what you get with our campaign,” said Jenny Altman, the style and fit expert for the line, on Good Morning America in January 2014.

The online shopping experience has also changed, showing the bras modeled on a girl with the actual bra size being shopped for, instead of a single slender model showing the bra for everything from A cup to DD. This helps women better visualize how the underwear will look on their own bodies, and prevent the disappointment that comes from not looking quite as toned in that fancy bra as the tiny model.

“We’re hoping to break the mold … we hope by embracing this that real girls everywhere will start to embrace their own beauty,” Altman said.

And as art has long emulated society (or is it the other way around?), this radical notion of authenticity has spawned a need for art without artifice, for beauty without arrangement.

In 2009, Peter Lindbergh photographed three celebrities wearing no makeup. The women graced the cover of French Elle Magazine with their bare skin and simple attire, surprising critics and readers alike. Of course, it may seem easy enough for a beautiful woman like Eva Herzivoga to feel comfortable with her picture on the front page of a magazine with no retouching and no makeup. And she does look comfortable, smiling serenely out of the soft, taupe hues of the cover.

Natural beauty Monica Bellucci stares out of her photograph with a defiant confidence, her dark hair and eyes contrasting wonderfully with the background. Sophie Marceau lounges calmly on her cover, the only of the three women not wearing the same taupe as the magazine’s background.

The effect is a marvelous declaration of real beauty.

“I wonder how long that’s going to last,” said Dennis Freedman, the creative director of W Magazine. “It raises an interesting point, but that in and of itself becomes a kind of gimmick. I would not bet my life savings that it is something they are going to continue.”

But despite Freedman’s skepticism, seven years later the thirst for reality persists in a world full of stimuli designed to make us feel inadequate, just so that we might be motivated to buy a product.

Artist Chuck Close doesn’t want anything you’re selling. “I have no intention of flattering people,” he said in an interview for The Telegraph in 2012. “I like wrinkles and crow’s feet and flaws, and somebody should know if I’m going to photograph them, that’s going to show up, you know?”

As one of the most renowned portrait artists for more than fifty years, Close has a knack for capturing a person’s essence. Having made a name for himself by creating huge hyper-realistic portraits based on photographs, Close transitioned into photography following his paralysis in 1988. Using a device that straps a brush to his wrist and forearm, Close continues to paint, but he is most recently known for a high-profile photography project for Vanity Fair.

The 2014 Vanity Fair Hollywood Portfolio is unlike anything Close has every done. “So I say no hair, no makeup, no wardrobe. Pick something, wear it, come on in, comb your own hair, and let’s get going.” So it was that twenty celebrities sat bare-faced before his intimidating 20-by-24 inch Polaroid camera.

“The reason I use the Polaroid is I’m not stealing anyone’s image,” Close said. “After every shot, the picture goes up on the wall; I can look at it and the sitter can look at it.”

Each image is more striking than the last, inching closer and closer to what Close is aiming for, though that goal could be anyone’s guess just by looking at the many shots he took of each of his subjects. For three hours, Close photographed each celebrity in one of three studios, every Polaroid taking between seven and ten minutes to complete. And all the while, his subjects stared down the monstrosity of the camera.

“It’s the size of a Volkswagon,” joked Close, “and you shove this baby right down their throat. It’s very intimidating. And I’m on the other side of the camera, looking in the brown-glass screen which is backwards and upside down, and I’m barking orders at them.”

But when the final photograph is selected, the intangible something that Close sought becomes apparent.

“I don’t do glamour shots and I don’t… they’re not airbrushed or whatever, so they can be rough,” said Close. “So I need to talk people through it, so that they’ll give up a great deal of vanity in order to do it, and it takes a real act of generosity and faith on the part of the subject, you know, to go with it and to give me their image without having any control over what’s going to happen.”

That faith paid off. Close’s photographs, featured in Vanity Fair’s March 2014 issue, are both strikingly real and quietly beautiful. Art without artifice. “There will be people who will think I didn’t glamourize the subject enough, and they’ll think I was cruel… There will be people who say, ‘Thank God,’” Close continued, “’somebody shows people as real people, the way they are, and their humanity shows through.’ And I do think… humanity is the essence of a portrait.”

Photographed both in color and in black and white, smiling and expressionless, head on and in profile, it is difficult to articulate just what the photographs have in common, to pinpoint why they are so obviously part of the same collection.

But they all exude a sense of quiet confidence. Gone are the celebrities of the glamorous red carpet shots, perfected with artful makeup and digital touchups. In their places sit real men and women, baring their faces to the world, stating that who they truly are is just as beautiful as what Hollywood wants them to be, if not more so.

It takes quite a bit of nerve to be photographed au naturel, especially for celebrities who are so often in the public eye, especially when tabloids are so keen to exploit every flaw and enlarge every blemish. But then, perhaps we wouldn’t be so self-conscious if magazines and advertisements everywhere weren’t telling us that beauty lies in the thin and the unwrinkled.

Others disagree. “Most of us who read fashion magazines don’t feel we’re confronting reality when we see a photograph of a grown woman with preteen thighs. (We certainly see enough countervailing tabloid shots to know exactly what celebrity thighs look like),” wrote Amanda Fortini for The Uncut in 2010. “If such photos enrage us, and often they do, it’s not because they damage our self-esteem, nor — let’s be honest — because we’re constantly fretting, like some earnest psychologist or crusading politician, about the emotional repercussions for adolescent girls. Our interest in altered images is not purely moral; it’s also aesthetic.”

And such is the argument that magazines are not about portraying the truth but instead are a channel for art. “Many contemporary images are illustrations masquerading as photographs, cartoons composed with a computer rather than a pen,” Fortini points out.

And of course, we know that magazines are Photoshopped. We don’t actually think that women are that thin, that their skin is that perfect, that their breasts are that firm. “Our readers are not idiots, especially when they see celebrities who are 50 and look 25,” Christine Leiritz, editor of French Marie Claire, told The New York Times in 2009.

But this is not about us, with our common sense and our life experience. This is about the girls younger than six who worry about their weight. This is about the about the millions of teenagers who have died and will die for the thin ideal.

And as Aerie and Dove prove with their advertising, a company does not have to drape its product on false perfection in order to sell it. As Peter Lindbergh proved for Elle, and Chuck Close for Vanity Fair, a fashion magazine need not tell a lie to talk of beauty.

Society emulates art, and ours is killing us.