Gazing at the images in magazines, it wasn't until I discovered photography and delved into the task of teaching myself everything I could about it (and digital imaging) that I realized just how distorted the world of beauty was. Most images are professionally polished with many things contributing to that final image that makes it onto the magazine racks. No wonder so many people have so many issues about the way we look! My daughter has been an inspiration when it comes to how I photograph women. I want our future generations to see beauty in any mirror, not in print.
An artificially manufactured beauty dominates mass media and the marketing industry growing from it, it is easy to see why a recent survey concluded that "Just 2% of today's women see themselves as beautiful".
In this way the impossible dream of beauty can be run endlessly. By continuosly and ever more subtly defining in artificial ways, modes and models of reference that are hard to reach for standard individuals, the corporate mechandising machine can keep its toy running indefinitely. And, if you really look and pay attention to it, with clean, detached eyes, you can see that the beauty model is cloned and repeated across the whole spectrum of communications you have chosen to receive from mainstream media. The irrelevant and needlessly expensive status symbols peddled at every commercial, you know it doesn't a genius to realize that all of what you are buying into has been created to fool you while significantly benefiting someone else.
Unless you open your eyes and realize that in this life, all those who benefit from the affects, you just become an unpaid extra in an extended commercial that you have been watching, but its your life. This warped, digitally distorted image of reality and beauty will continue to drive, shape and dominate your personal ability to make true sense and meaning of this beautiful gift called life.
Just recently I saw the work of a photographer that really concerned me. Not because the model was naked, not the context of the shots, and it wasn't because of his technical competence, but because of the fact his less than flattering style is potentially destructive to this young, and in her own way, very beautiful woman.
My focus is on my own style, love it or hate it, I am me, and that is what we should all respect. If my images left women looking like the young woman I mention, I would feel an obligation through pure decency to sell my camera equipment and never subject another human being to such humiliation again, even if the model herself does not understand it.
Insight from another woman left me feeling that this young woman I have mentioned may have felt uncomfortable approaching someone like myself as she didn't think she was attractive enough for my style of photography, and that the photographer she did use was real "warts and all" so his and her expectations were then lower across the board.
Why are women accepting this? They are the consumers the advertising is designed for, the marketing industry grows because of... It makes me sad to think that behind the beautiful eyes of my wife, daughter, sisters, mother, friends, and colleagues that there are others with this view of themselves. I am sorry, this has to stop! We may not all agree on what is beautiful, and don't get me wrong, there is a time and place for everything, but its definitely not at the expense of anyones self esteem.