One of the most important advancements in beauty in recent history is our ability to photo-shop or edit photos in way to make them more "perfect" to us. This article discusses what that means for beauty and society.
Photo-shopping is a controversial topic in the world today. For many it's considered a bad thing because it puts out unrealistic standards of beauty for women to achieve. The many advertisements which employ photo-shopping, subconsciously send this idea of beauty to young women who's brains are still developing, they supposedly strive to achieve this idea of beauty as society deems women importance based on their beauty. For men this is a difficult idea to grasp, as we aren't really expected to be have a flawless appearance, rather in many respects we're supposed to have a rugged appearance, to appear more manly. Men are rather deemed important based on their earning potential and career.
Photo-shopped images also take a lot of hate because like makeup, many people understand it as a deception, and take that very personally, that the person is trying to deceive them into liking them when their real self might not match such a person's high standards. Again this comes back to a subconscious idea in people's brains that rate beauty in terms of ability to procreate. I'm reminded of a story in the news not too long ago, where a Chinese man sued his wife and divorced because their child was ugly to him, the wife had in fact undergone a lot of surgery to change her appearance, but this would obviously not change her genetics and therefore the husband felt this was deceiving him, as she hadn't mentioned it.
I think this idea of procreation is so strong in many people, that it even spills over into photo-shopped images.
On the other side, there are people who think of beauty as a pure art form, separate from it's connection to procreation. Photo-shopping is therefore something amazing that can help beauty transcend to new levels of imagination, much like computer generated art can show us amazing things in films that would otherwise not be possible to see. Editing an image can bring in a new idea of beauty that would otherwise be impossible naturally.
When considering both ideas, you can sympathize which either side. So it's hard to really condemn or praise photo-shopping images.
Ultimately it comes down to what the majority of society accept, and in reality, society is full of followers who follow trends and imagery. So they have no choice in the matter.
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