Whenever I'm in CVS waiting to check out, I always take a quick glance at the magazines on the stands. I look at the covers and see these people that I look up to and idolize. However, when I look a little closer, I don't see the person I'm secretly dying to meet. I see a totally different person, thanks to photoshop.
I'm not going to lie; I have photoshopped myself before, mostly because my friends and I were fooling around with the software.
When I was a young teenager, I didn't really know what photoshop was so I assumed what I saw on the cover of magazines was really what these people looked like. I wanted so badly to look like that. I looked at myself and saw an acne-ridden face, bigger hips, not so flat tummy, and an overall chubby look and I hated myself for it. I hated that I didn't look like the people on the cover of a magazine.
That's the issue with the overuse of photoshop. It creates this image of an "ideal" man or woman that is literally unattainable. Young girls and boys look at these covers and wish and hope to look like that, but the funny part is, the person on the cover most likely doesn't even look like that.
Photoshop usage has been so severe that the celebrities on the cover have called out the magazine for using too much photoshop. Earlier this year, Zendaya called out a magazine for photoshopping her hips, skin tone, and torso on Instagram. The idea that a company photoshopped someone so much that they were called out is ridiculous.
Photoshop isn't all bad, but when magazines and other companies are using it so heavily, what kind of message is that sending out to the young men and women of our world?
Being thin and having perfect skin isn't what it means to be "beautiful" or "pretty." We are those things by who we are as people and how we treat other human beings. I recently saw a video that showed the reactions of people being told they're beautiful. It was truly touching and heartbreaking at the same time. Some people didn't believe it and others got shy.
We are told that in order to be beautiful we need to look like the models on a runway and the celebrities on the cover of a magazine. I'm now realizing that that's simply not true.
While photoshop is still being overused, companies and celebrities like Aerie and Demi Lovato have taken a stand against the use of photoshop.
Aerie has a collection called, "Aerie Real". This means they don't photoshop their models in the hopes of spreading body positivity and love for oneself inside and out.
Demi Lovato also recently did a campaign in Vanity Fair where she posed for photos, completely nude, with no makeup, and un-photoshopped. She did this also to spread love and body positivity to her fans and people across the world.
What I'm trying to say is, the overuse of photoshop is seriously harming our society. It causes so much body insecurity in our lives. Being thin and having nice skin just isn't everything.
Photoshop creates a fake version of the real us. Isn't it better to be real than fake?
