Anti-Photoshop initiatives discourage unrealistic beauty standards in ads
Original image with CVS Beauty Mark and a digitally altered image.
Photo provided by CVS Health
With the rise of social awareness trends, customers have demanded more authenticity and honesty about their products: what's inside, how it was made and how it's advertised.
As a result, digitally modified images of models are being dismissed and replaced. Instead, companies are beginning to use unaltered photos of models to portray their product.
CVS recently placed a ban on photo manipulation of models for their own makeup brand and will enforce the regulations on other makeup and beauty brands on its aisles. By 2020, all makeup marketing or promotional displays in CVS must commit to the new standard or be identified as “digitally modified.”
CVS Pharmacy President Helena Foulkes told USA today that the photo manipulation ban was in response to consumers—mainly women—holding themselves to unattainable standards and harboring toxic mindsets due to these airbrushed ads.
“We’re all consuming massive amounts of media every day, and we’re not necessarily looking at imagery that is real and true,” Foulkes said. “To try to hold ourselves up to be like those women is impossible because even those women don’t look like how they appear in those photographs.”
Foulkes explained that the manipulation ban will cover several different characteristics, not just skin imperfections.
“We will not digitally alter or change a person's shape, size, proportion, skin or eye color, or enhance or alter their lines or wrinkles or other individual characteristics,” Foulkes said.
Adjunct Instructor of Photography at Lee Tom Kilpatrick has spent a majority of his life behind a camera, traveling the world and photographing different cultures.
Taking a picture of someone, he explained, is about capturing who they are—imperfections and all. Photoshop, with its endless editing capabilities, leaves photographers susceptible to straying from the truth of an image.
“With Photoshop today, anyone can take a photograph and make it say and do anything they want,” Kilpatrick said. “I think it’s the photographer’s job to be honest with the person being photographed and also the viewers.”
But it’s not just makeup brands that are taking an honest approach to advertising. Clothing brands like Aerie have promoted their product using unretouched images and a diverse group of models with various body types and skin colors, also including people with disabilities.
Junior intercultural studies major Hannah Hedgepeth explained that online shopping is difficult when she feels she cannot trust the images that accompany different items.
“Especially when ordering clothes, it is so helpful to see a model with a real body in the picture,” Hedgepeth said.
As an avid photographer who uses Instagram as her main platform, Hedgepeth has decided to take a down-to-earth approach to editing for social media. She wants her conservative editing to convey vulnerability and honesty.
“When I am shooting for someone, I want them to see themselves in a way that maybe they haven’t before: as unique, gorgeous and fully themselves,” Hedgepeth said. “Editing in photography should be about creating something in partnership with your subject, not destroying your subject in order to falsify what is real.”
Senior digital media major Zach Camp has worked for two of Lee’s main media outlets. As a photographer and videographer for a university, he has learned to balance promoting a message and grasping the truth of an image.
Camp explained that producing content for Lee Publications and Media Services meant keeping a consistent brand and tone within the media, as well as advertising the school to prospective students.
“We wanted to capture faces, smiles, diversity…everything that Lee has here, just to show it,” Camp said.
Photography, Camp explained, has a keen way of projecting a message. He said it’s important to take a step back and see what is being promoted beyond the images and whether or not that is representative of the institution.
Camp explained that viewers must realize companies will often tailor their photos to match their agenda.
“It depends on what message you’re trying to get across,” Camp said. “Cosmopolitan magazine is trying to sell you beauty; they will edit photos to that criteria. Realize that that’s their bias, and their photos will represent that.”
For the professional photographer, the editing process can sometimes be as much an art form as taking the picture. However, Hedgepeth believes it’s best to stick to editing features of the picture as a whole and avoid editing away any permanent features or quirks of the subject.
“Working with lighting and coloring is to be expected and can do wonders for any image,” Hedgepeth said. “However, when you begin to actually alter someone’s body, or change their face, I think you are doing them an injustice.”
According to Hedgepeth, producing and consuming heavily edited images of models can lead to deception on both ends of the camera.
“That form of editing tells the subject that they weren’t enough by themselves, as themselves,” Hedgepeth said. “And then this message is equally imprinted onto the people who see this over-edited and unjustified image.”
According to Foulkes, consumers are recognizing a need for authenticity in photos and are reacting positively to the recent CVS initiative. She explained that this change in media and advertising is simply adjusting to a shifting culture.
“The world is changing fast, social media is changing things, and there’s a sense of empowerment among young girls that didn’t exist when I was growing up,” Foulkes said.
Hedgepeth commends the evolving direction of beauty advertising.
“As this shift is happening, I applaud the models who work for a ‘no altered images’ company,” Hedgepeth said. “They are stepping up in courage and confidence and are willing to not hide behind an edit. Instead, they and the product are at the forefront—real and raw and so much more appealing to real people.”
