Media begin to promote natural beauty

The taut face of a pale, young woman stands out from the screen, a tightly wrapped brown bun tied on her head. This image is part of a YouTube video titled “Beauty Standards Around the World,” which includes a series of pictures of the same woman Photoshopped to look “beautiful” in 25 different countries.

At the end of the video, it asks the question “What do you find beautiful?”

The video aims to emphasize the importance of natural beauty, instead of lathering makeup and using Photoshop to enhance images. Recently, some journalists have selected pictures that have been enhanced in Photoshop and compared them with the original pictures.

As the movement toward natural beauty has gained steam, young people today better understand the media’s often exaggerated images.

“I think that most kids aren’t really influenced by [these images],” senior Mihir Samdarshi said. “I know a few students who maybe live their entire lives engrossed with Teen Vogue or Seventeen, but I don’t see it propagated throughout the entire school.”

In fact, in 2012, Seventeen Magazine responded to a petition that was signed by more than 84,000 people asking that it include an unaltered spread each month. Instead, the company promised to never digitally alter girls’ bodies again.

As a reader of Seventeen, senior Jessica Uong sometimes wishes for the same features, like eyebrows or abs, that models have, but is still also content with her own appearance.

“Our generation has been changing for the better and is accepting of how we express ourselves,” Uong said. “As long as you remember to love yourself because you only get one shot, you'll be OK.”

According to sophomore Kelsey Kinoshita, there are also many published celebrity interviews where celebrities promote body positivity and self-confidence, such as Barbara Walter’s interview with Jennifer Lawrence about the media’s effect on the younger generation.

“[The interviews] make [the celebrities] seem more real,” Kinoshita said. “It makes people think, ‘If they don’t look like [their Photoshopped selves], how should I look like that?’”

Nowadays, we can alter not only the appearance of individuals in photos, but also their portrayal in films.

As a student in the Media Arts Program (MAP), Kinoshita has gleaned valuable lessons from filmmaking.

“[MAP has] made me realize that the people behind the camera have a very big role in how actors are presented, which is usually in the best way possible,” she said.

When Kinoshita films her peers, she said she gets a sense of who they really are. Because she sees the “real side” of her actors, Kinoshita thinks the celebrities portrayed in the media don’t always seem “real” because they are placed at such a high standard of perfection which, in reality, is unattainable.

Besides the celebrity advocates and actors who are aiming for more realistic standards, the “movement of natural beauty” has been backed by organizations that publish videos and articles that have sparked interest about the use of Photoshop in dramatizing beauty.

Sophomore Nimisha Devanagondi, a photographer who has her own Facebook page entitled “A Thousand Pixels,” feels that Photoshop generally lowers people’s self-esteem when they look at images of models.

“[People] try to copy [models] in a way, but sometimes [achieving the same appearance as models is] not possible because it can only be achieved with Photoshop,” Devanagondi said.

Devanagondi explained that she only uses Photoshop to tweak minor details, like background lighting and color contrast.

“The people in my photoshoots are naturally beautiful, so I don’t need to change anything about them to make them look better,” she said.

Though many actors perpetuate harmful beliefs about beauty, others, such as actress Jennifer Lawrence, embrace their appearance and teach children to do the same.

“I like the way I look. I’m really sick of these actresses looking like birds,” Lawrence said, in an interview published in Flare magazine. “I’d rather look a little chubby on camera and look like a person in real life than look great on screen and look like a scarecrow in real life.”