by Dhwani Shah
Remember the evolution advertisement from Dove’s Campaign for real beauty? It depicted the evolution of a young woman from real beauty to billboard beauty. The video showed how the media manufactures and manipulates images to create impossibly high standards of attractiveness. Today, the New York Times had a great editorial video feature on the same topic, called “Sex, Lies, and Photoshop.” Image editors are heavily involved in the production of advertisements and magazines. “Every picture has been worked on, some 20-30 rounds,” said an editor in the video short, “They are perfected to death.” Many European countries have taken a stand against the perpetuation of unhealthy or unreal body images, but to date, little has been done in the United States.
