by Stacy Calvert

Created on: October 12, 2009

Altered images have become a staple in the beauty business in recent years. There are benefits to this heavily criticized trend, and not just for the magazines wishing to produce gorgeous cover photos.

First, it shows us that not even models, chosen because they epitomize the current aesthetic ideal, can meet the ridiculous standards created by the fashion and beauty media. Magazines live and die by their sponsors, so the ultimate goal is to make readers feel as if they must buy the products hawked and reviewed in its pages in order to measure up. What better way to create that sense of urgency in readers than to display an impossibly perfect image on the cover and inside the magazine?

When beauty magazine audiences realize this, they can see the industry in the same way they view commercials for potato chips or vacuum cleaners. Most of us like to think we're immune to the call of the commercial; in fact, unless an ad is especially creative or well-done and provides some entertainment value, we usually just flip the channel or leave the room. We can apply this same attitude to beauty magazines; they can be fun to read, but their goals are pretty transparent.

If even models, hired because of their flawless skin, tall, slender figures, and perfectly symmetrical faces, require digital tweaking of their likenesses in order to sell magazines, something is wrong with the industry, not its models or fans. They are trying to sell an image that, apparently, no one can live up to. Sought-after models have the means to buy any beauty product they desire, and access to the best plastic surgeons and top stylists. If their images are still not quite perfect enough, that speaks volumes about the aims of magazines, and the effectiveness of the $200 jars of moisturizers and other products sold in their pages.

Seeing the beauty media as just another business, doing anything they can to make money, can encourage us to seek out ways to rebel against it. While the people in the industry are just doing their jobs, trying to be competitive like any other kind of business, this does not mean we have to be victims of their pursuit of perfection. Instead, we can take their media manipulation as a challenge to appreciate ourselves for our creativity, kindness, sense of humor, and even what is interesting or attractive about the way we look, rather than lamenting our short legs or less-than-perfect skin. After all, if supermodels are unable to cut the mustard, maybe we should chase our dreams, rather than some elusive, unattainable goal of physical perfection.

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