by Daniel Stuart

Created on: April 26, 2009

Distorted perception of Beauty Speech Good morning ladies, gentlemen and teacher, You've all seen the magazine covers of Vogue and GQ, the posters around the city advertising L'oreals latest products and calvin klien's latest clothing apparel. Our technology has increased to such an extent that companies can edit and manipulate photo's easily, erase the errors and create stunning and beautiful posters and advertisements for our enjoyment. Technology has many benefits and sadly many down sides. Images are manipulated to extremes and every fashion, beauty and magazine company does it.

By removing all wrinkles and airbrushing to the extremes we are giving a distorted view of beauty and are presented with false and impossible ideals which may lead to emotional and health issues. Everyone knows that models and magazine covers are all photo shopped but not everyone knows the extremes and to which extent this occurs. Is this a bad thing? Well to some extent it is a good thing and we derive much enjoyment from gazing at these beautiful pictures. But when it becomes out of control it becomes deadly to our health both emotional and physical. The focus of my speech to today is to outline what measures we in Australia can do to protect ourselves against the negative impact of this sort of advertising.

The program Photoshop has created a huge leap in the media industry. Anything is possible with this program, from removing one pimple to morphing a teenage body with the face of a. woman. If a model turns up to the photo shoot with a massive pimple, no problem, one click of the mouse in Photoshop removes it. If she turns up a bit fat, no problem just shrink her down a bit, and if her legs aren't long enough, no problem, just stretch them a bit in Photoshop. Today not one single image of a top model or celebrity is released in the media or anywhere in the world without the permission of the Photo shop retoucher. Every single image will be retouched, and photo shopped to restore and communicate a sense of beauty and fascination to us. So what's wrong with it? The images are edited to such extremes that they are unrealistic and false. People's view of the ideal slim woman figure or the strong man figure are distorted by these false images. This may cause us to become depressed about our body and to not be happy with how we look and how we feel about ourselves. These images are everywhere and inescapable on roadways, billboards, shop front windows, T.V, Internet and their major

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>