In todays Digital Production lesson I learnt a lot about how brands in the makeup industry and cosmetic world, rely a lot on computer retouching to perfect beauty portraiture for their campaigns.
A lot of retouching used on iconic models we see promoting and wearing lipstick for premium cosmetic and fashion brands such as 'Dior', are very unrealistic. Because of false advertisement of these models that are retouched so much that they appear to look like a completely different person, many women and young girls in particular focus and obsess on their imperfections and appearance based on these unrealistic and 'perfectly symmetrical' looks that are seen 'acceptable' and 'beautiful'.
At the beginning of the lesson, in groups we all took images of our partners and our self, one being a normal selfie or portrait picture and then another image experimenting with how we can retouch the face. We continuously retouched the face until it gradually looked very different to the original photo, whilst at the same time recording the number of changes we made and what types of changes e.g. skin, eyes, facial shape. I realised that I made more changes on my self portrait then my partners, focusing on smoothing my skin and slimming my face slightly, after experimenting I felt that I looked worse after retouching and even a little scary as I looked nothing like me. This experiment can be used to argue that beauty is definitely is in the eye of the beholder, as many of my peers in my class agreed that a lot of people looked much better natural and without retouching. Ever since we have started to discuss retouching in our digital production lessons, I have realised that whenever I now see beauty or fashion campaigns that feature a models face close up some of these images look borderline creepy and doll like.
Although, I agree that a certain 'look' fits a theme of a shoot and that means you must consider all factors for your shoot such as hair, make-up and race in terms of your model, I am very against extreme false advertising and retouching to the limit were it looks like any person could have been in the campaign model or not, because the model is so retouched. For me that is where retouching is completely ridiculous. Also when I'm in a cosmetic store and I happen to see advertisements or examples of makeup products on models, I know for a fact that a make-up look or product will look different on everyone, but that does not mean that they should enhance this product in their advertisements to make it look more appealing.
We also touched on 'westernised beauty' and how these days premium cosmetic brands creating beauty campaigns have started to use a computer generated program to make women faces appear ideally beautiful and acceptable for westernised society. One thing that I wasn't aware of and learnt was that this is only for caucasian ethnicity, which automatically discriminates against any other ethnicity and wipes away any characteristics and unique facial features that makes a person 'them' and human and leaves them looking like a westernised 'clone'. This is a big issue that not only affects
women and young girls in society today but also models of ethnicity. Still to this day ethnic models are faced with ignorant and discriminative backlash even if they are working for one of best brands in the industry.
For example recently the worldwide famous Rihanna became the 'First Black Spokesperson for Dior', for this bothered me simply because why must there be such a focus on her race why not just her beauty? Although this is great that Dior have opened there doors to more diverse ethnicities, but why must the focus be on race as if it is such a big achievement to be acknowledged even though your black? The model Jordan Dunn has also had many experiences in her career where she has had to bring and apply her own foundation to a shoot or fashion show, because her makeup artist had foundations to cater for all the caucasian and olive skin models, but only one 'brown' shade for her. I feel strongly about this because it effects young girls more then we think, my niece for example, on numerous occasions has compared herself to famous singers such as Beyonce and Rihanna, claiming that she doesn't really like her skin colour that much or her hair because it isn't 'light enough' or 'straight' like theirs, but she has no idea how much work they've had to look like that.
This also supports beauty is really in the eye of the beholder as women such a Jordan Dunn that I find extremely beautiful wouldn't even be featured in this computer generated program that make woman the ideal western beauty. Although extreme retouching is misleading and bad, we as make-up artists have a huge role to play when enhancing or changing something about our model for a photoshoot. If we apply too much contour or highlight that slims the face so much they look different already, and then this enhanced even more by photoshop retouching, it can be argued that make is just as bad.
For example in a recent lesson I learnt that Italian women in the Tudor times where said to be 'painted ladies' as they wore so much make-up. This became such a problem that men began to argue they were being mislead as their wives looked completely different once married and seen in their natural skin.
