Airbrushing “Gone Wrong” Shows the Absurdity of Retouching Images of Women

After reading Jodi’s post on the Keep it Real Challenge, we could not agree more with her statements and the fact that women (even when they are aware of the airbrushing and photoshopping process) feel bad about themselves after seeing bodies photoshopped to perfection. These photoshopped bodies are presented as “the norm” as many magazines maintain that they only use a little bit of airbrushing, when in fact they use a whole lot.

We have always thought it strange that women in advertisements have no cellulite (when in fact about 90 percent of women do have cellulite), no stretch marks, no scars, no blemishes, no birthmarks, and often no facial features whatsoever except for eyes, a nose, and a mouth on a perfectly wrinkle-free, smooth face. This is because many models, although still beautiful women, are airbrushed beyond what the human body looks like.

In order to attempt to use airbrushing to our advantage and make a point out of it, we thought we would present you with a few “airbrushing disasters.” We hope that these examples can help show the absurdity of airbrushing and photoshopping, and how trying to minimize and slim down models’ bodies often leads to strange body alignments or even the misplacement of limbs. 

One of our favorite airbrushing disaster pieces is probably this one of Demi Moore. At a distance she looks great, but when you view the close-up you can see that her hip and her thigh look strange. That is because they do not line up. Moore has been so radically and badly airbrushed that her body is broken into different pieces.

Want another example? Look at this advertisement from Dolce & Gabbana. We saw this ad in a magazine and thought it looked unusual, but did not think more of it until our mother showed it to us again and said: but look at her leg, that is some strange airbrushing. And it really is. The woman’s lower body appears to have one leg coming out of her crotch and then a missing thigh. It could be the way that she is sitting but it is probably the result of some pretty bad airbrushing.

Our next example is another favorite one. In the rush to photoshop the reality out of the model, one of her arms was also removed. Is this a model with just one arm? No, this model has both of her arms in real life.

We would like to add that we are not trying to implement or promote disablism by stating that actual pictures of models with missing limbs and so on are not beautiful or are a type of entertainment. We simply want to highlight the fact that airbrushing and photoshopping can reach such extremes as to alter a woman into something that she is not, a body that is unlike her actual body (for example, we know that Marisa Miller has two arms). Instead, we hope that we can laugh at how absurd and ridiculous airbrushing and photoshopping really is. No person actually looks like that and we are not failures or unusual for having the bodies that we do. It is not our bodies that are flawed. Instead, these “common” and “perfect” bodies do not exist and they are not common.