A Photo Finish

Throughout history, the definition of beauty has been constantly changing. In Europe during the Renaissance, paintings depicted pale, curvy women as the ideal. Whereas wafer thin, feminine men of Victorian era art were seen as wealthy, refined and handsome. Beauty is an abstract and vague idea, and yet so much of our daily thoughts and efforts go into our looks. We all want to look like the actors and models on the covers of magazines, even though we are fairly aware the imaged is tweaked and airbrushed to perfection. Instead of the cloth canvases of the past, artwork portraying society's ideals of beauty are now recorded on glossy prints.

Airbrushing is such a staple in the magazine industry that Pascal Dangin makes a living by doing "postproduction" photo work for fashion magazines. He is the essential go-to man for top tier photographers, design-ers and magazine editors before any of their pictures go into print. Dangin worked on a total of 144 images in the March 2008 issue of Vogue: the cover, 36 fashion pictures, and 107 advertisements.

People in the fashion and photography industries revere Dangin as an artist. He has perfected the art of making people look supernaturally beautiful. When he looks at a photo, he does not see it as a picture of a model, but as the foundation of something that can be stunning. His eyes search for details that can change to enhance the scene. A ruined photo is supposedly fixed after Dangin has made a microscopic change to the angle of a shoulder blade. On at least one occasion, he has even replaced a cover model's mouth with one from another photo of her.

Photo retouching has been part of photography since its conception. A prominent example from history is a famous portrait of Abraham Lincoln, taken in 1860, that is actually a composite of Lincoln's head on the body of a Southern politician named John Calhoun. The purported reason for the composited photograph is that Lincoln had not yet taken a sufficiently heroic-style portrait. While there is a need for Lincoln to be presented as a strong and powerful president, his image does not rely solely on his looks. Our president is not remembered for his figure but for his work for our country. People do not look at Lincoln's portrait, wishing they had the same perfect body.

People do, however, covet the body of models in magazines. Lincoln could have gotten away with a large potbelly, like many of our other presidents have, because he is not a model or movie star. While photographers and editors may look at their covers as works of art, ordinary people look at them from the perspective of a consumer, an admirer of a flawless model or celebrity they hope to emulate.

The problem is that the photos we are altering today are having a detrimental effect on the way we view our bodies. Now retouching is being used to enhance breasts, smooth away wrinkles, enlarge muscles, or slim down figures. The end result of this manipulation is a pretty cover photo, but an unrealistic one. While many celebrities would like to be remembered for more than their looks, the fact is that how they appear is part of their package. We not only watch them in movies or buy their CDs, but we see them walk red carpets and take notes on what to buy at the mall based on their paparazzi shots. When one talks about a celebrity, looks will always factor into the conversation. Perhaps their influence over our lives are not always so evident, but there is no denying that in this society, beauty is not in the eye of the beholder, it is on the cover of magazines. Magazines and tabloids set the standards of beauty with their wide distribution throughout the world. We read them to find out what to buy, what to watch, and how to look. Its shiny pages shape our world views.

Heavily retouched magazine covers are seen by millions who do not consider how airbrushed the image actually is. We know a painting is an artistic interpretation of reality. It does not actually look real and we do not see it as a real person. We take for granted the fact that a photograph is supposed to be a true representation of what is really there. Although magazine covers are obviously fixed, we do not consciously think about the fact that they have trimmed off two inches around a model's waist or replaced her mouth with another. In our minds, it should resemble very closely to what the person actually looks like. Our perception of a medium and how that medium actually works are different.

But unlike before, there are consequences to this art. It has the power to influence because of its broad and relentless circulation. We live in a world of size-zero beauty, which is a dangerously unrealistic goal. Photography is an art form, and we must remember to separate fiction from reality. Although an actress's legs may look amazing on a magazine cover, it took more than good lighting to get them that way. Those photos are pure wish fulfillment and covers only represent what flawless beauty can look like. No one should have to try living up to that. The reality is that being flawless is a flawed concept. Perfection is imperfection that is all we can live up to.

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