Photoshop: Media’s Newest Scapegoat

Fashion magazines use Photoshop. Whether in advertisements, spreads, or covers, you can bet that models and settings have been retouched. Yet, whenever celebrities who do not fit our society’s skewed view of the ideal female form are featured in magazines, speculation at how much they have been retouched arises. These speculations, intended to point out Photoshop’s role in this constructed ideal, also serve to reinforce it.

Recently, esteemed fashion magazines like Elle and Vogue have chosen to showcase female television stars on their covers. For the past four years, Elle has had a “Women in TV” series at the beginning of each year and Vogue is known to choose fashionable television stars for their covers. Elle debuted their yearly “Women in TV” magazine covers, featuring Amy Poehler, Zooey Deschanel, Allison Williams and Mindy Kaling, while Vogue chose to feature Girls writer, director and star, Lena Dunham.

The release of these magazine issues has been met with disdain and outrage, as fashion media outlets like Fashionista and Jezebel have expressed their dissatisfaction with Kaling and Dunham’s touched up and retouched photos. Mindy Kaling’s cover was criticized for being the only one in black and white. It was cropped and retouched as well—a clear case of ‘one of these is not like the other’. The concern over her cover was not only with Photoshop, but with the fact that Elle’s only woman of color covergirl was the only one whose cover was in black and white. Dunham’s shoot also came under scrutiny because of the anticipated Photoshop used to make Dunham fit Vogue’s ideal form. This prompted self-described feminist blog, Jezebel, to go as far as offering $10,000 to anyone who could produce Dunham’s unretouched photo spread to show the extent of the Photoshop used on Dunham’s body.

I am not here to talk about Photoshop as a moral issue. Whether or not Photoshop is contributing to part of our decaying culture is not at stake here. Time after time, ‘rage against Photoshop’ is used as a conduit to display our angst at the way women are portrayed in magazines and advertisements. Instead of actively calling for change, pointing out Photoshop use on celebrities who do not look like models and even going as far as to offer money to point out their faults is, in fact, scapegoating the use of Photoshop for how we feel women’s bodies should be portrayed in the media.  By not accepting Photoshop for what it is, we are collectively and continually shaming women who do not fit our culture’s body norms.

In her book Bossypants, self-described feminist writer and actress Tina Fey dedicates an entire chapter to Photoshop. In it, she describes her personal experience with the practice and how even when doing a photoshoot for a feminist magazine she still anticipated being photoshopped. She views Photoshop as a simple technological advancement and not as the devil’s work.

“Give it up. Retouching is here to stay,” Fey writes. “ Technology doesn’t move backward. No society has ever de-industrialized. Which is why we’ll never turn back from Photoshop.”

Fey accepts that Photoshop is a practice that is here to stay and that it is not the only factor in our problems regarding accepted body norms.

“Photoshop itself is not evil,” she writes. “Just like Italian salad dressing is not inherently evil, until you rub it all over a desperate young actress and stick her on the cover of Maxim, pretending to pull her panties down.”

The problem here is with how women’s bodies are posed and portrayed, not with Photoshop itself.  Pointing out the retouching will not change the fact that women are constantly posed in various states of undress. If anything, only emphasizing Photoshop use when it comes to certain celebrities reinforces our idea of who should be on a magazine. It is saying, “Lena Dunham must be retouched since she would not be on the cover of Vogue otherwise.” (When actually, the photos showed very minimal retouching to begin with.)

When Dunham and Kaling were reached for comment about their controversial spreads, they were both affronted by how the media had reacted to their pictures.

“I love my @ELLEmagazine cover. It made me feel glamorous & cool. And if anyone wants to see more of my body, go on thirteen dates with me,” Kaling tweeted on January 7.

Dunham used her response to ‘photoshop-gate’ to make a statement about the misguided outrage.

“I know some people have been very angry about the cover and that confuses me a little. I don’t understand why, Photoshop or no, having a woman who is different than the typical Vogue cover girl, could be a bad thing,” Dunham told Slate.

Dunham is right. Instead of applauding Vogue for finally starting to change their covergirl demographic from a size zero supermodel to a woman like Dunham, we tried to find fault in it.  By offering to pay for unretouched photos, Jezebel was attacking Dunham and perpetuating an image of “ideal body type,” just by pointing out that Dunham does not fit that body type. After all, they do not have a history of doing this with other Vogue cover girls.

Photoshop is here to stay. It is a major factor in constructing the fantasy element of fashion. It is widely used and recognized. What are we actually accomplishing when we point out that Photoshop has been used on celebrities who do not fit the fashion industry’s body norms? We are definitely not stopping Photoshop use, but we are doing exactly what people accuse Photoshop of doing—we are making women feel bad about their bodies.