Does Photoshop set unrealistic expectations?
We look at magazines and think "why can't I look like that model"? We strive for perfection, especially as girls. It is well known that magazine editors use photo altering software to make their models look completely different and in some cases unrecognizable. Teens search for ways to look like the beautiful people that are in those magazines or on billboards but is it right to make them strive for something that isn't real? We are setting them up for failure and at an already difficult time in life they are constantly bombarded with reminders that they will never be good enough or pretty enough. Where is the line to be drawn? Is it drawn when more and more adolescent age girl develop eating disorders? Or when they turn to surgery to make them feel worthy of pictures?
There is a place and purpose for photoshop and an extent to which it should be used. To use it to set unrealistic goals for people is unethical but to use it to enhance a photo or correct mistakes is exactly why it was created. To me a healthy portrayed person is not one of those mistakes that should "corrected" by photoshop. I might be alone in this opinion but if we are fixing things that don't need fixed then we are only creating feelings of unworthiness. Unworthy to be loved for who we are and what we look like. Unworthy to be happy in our own skin. Why do have to see models that are unnaturally skinny and think that we need to look like them? Photoshop was created to beautify, not to promote anorexic looking women.
There is a place and purpose for photoshop and an extent to which it should be used. To use it to set unrealistic goals for people is unethical but to use it to enhance a photo or correct mistakes is exactly why it was created. To me a healthy portrayed person is not one of those mistakes that should "corrected" by photoshop. I might be alone in this opinion but if we are fixing things that don't need fixed then we are only creating feelings of unworthiness. Unworthy to be loved for who we are and what we look like. Unworthy to be happy in our own skin. Why do have to see models that are unnaturally skinny and think that we need to look like them? Photoshop was created to beautify, not to promote anorexic looking women.