It is the worst kept industry secret: the huge amounts of Photoshop and digital airbrushing that goes into creating the perfect faces and flawless bods gracing magazine covers. Chiselled jawlines, pert noses, cellulite-free thighs, whittled down waists; there is nothing that a good Photoshop artist cannot accomplish with the flick of the mouse.
In our times of super-intense scrutiny, body-shaming, and obsession with perfection, it is only expected that celebrities would be under compulsion to look nothing less than perfect. When even regular folks will not post a single picture on social media without spending time and effort using apps and filters to improve their looks, one can only imagine the pressure on celebrities to look flawless.
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The problem comes in when the digital do-overs go to extreme levels. In their question for flawless beauty, often advertisers and magazines go a tad too far in beautifying celebrities. Besides setting dangerous and unrealistic body ideals, the results often end up being not just all too obvious but downright ludicrous.
Take the recent Vogue cover with Kareena Kapoor Khan in an orange bikini and white netted wrap, with the sea in the background. Bebo stuns alright, flaunting a bod that would be worthy of a teenager. Not a trace of the sagging belly that pregnancy brings and not even a single stretch mark in sight. The magazine came in for rather strident criticism for ‘beautifying the cover but making an ugly statement’ about unrealistic body image.
Even male users wrote in to say, “Wow @vogueindia giving false dreams to women out there.... I am truly in favour she's glamorous and all but this picture seems too photoshopped. Something is not right with this picture.”
Something was not right either with the picture of Priyanka Chopra on the cover of Maxim India – leave alone her flawless body, even her armpit had been smoothened of every natural crease, to look unrealistically perfect! PC settled the matter, posting a pic of herself flaunting her natural pit – and no, it was nothing like the Barbie-doll plasticity of the cover image!
From Rani Mukerji’s uber sharp shape on the cover of Vogue, to Alia Bhatt’s curiously elongated arms on Femina's cover and unrealistically tiny waist, from Kajol’s shockingly whitened visage, to Neha Dhupia’s suspiciously slender frame, photoshop has insidiously spread its wand of perfection.
And none of our celebs seem to mind in the least…
In stark contrast, several Hollywood actresses have come strongly against the photoshopping of their images. Keira Knightley came out to say that her bust was significantly altered to appear larger in the posters of King Arthur, while Beyoncé had hit the roof when she found out that H&M intended to slim her figure digitally – she refused to greenlight the images, forcing the magazine to use the originals.
“It goes against my morals, the way that my parents brought me up and what I consider to be natural beauty. I will never give in,” Kate Winslet had said about the issue.
In our experience, Vidya Balan has been the rare exception to the photoshopping rule in B-town. Never giving in to the pressure to appear ‘perfect’, she has resolutely insisted that her images never be ‘touched up’ to the absurd and unnatural standards that are de rigueur today. But then Ms. Balan was never your typical B-town blonde now, was she?!
And till more celebrities find the self-esteem and confidence to allow themselves to be seen as less than perfect beings, the plasticised power of Photoshop will reign on.
