You Look Mah-valous... Or Do You?

An integral part of media literacy is understanding that the media that we encounter was produced by someone who has a message to share. It is our duty as responsible consumers of media to pause to consider the message and its meaning. After reading Kim Anderson's post on photography in the age of Photoshop, I thought I would chime in with a recent find that might be beneficial in making young people aware of just how many of the images they encounter (especially those of the rich and famous) have actually been digitally altered – and the reasons behind those alterations.

Britian's Channel 4 Learning (a service for students and educators not unlike CBS's Channel 1) released what they called a “consumer self-esteem game” for young people with the intent of exposing how many of the images we see have been altered to present their subjects in a more flattering light and to call into question how readily we should trust that any of the images we encounter in mass media are actually originals.

“Cover Girl” brings players into the ethics-less worth of Glossip Magazine. In a series of mini-games, players are told to use simplified Photoshop tools to alter the images of various women who are to appear on the magazine's cover. Alterations include removing under-eye wrinkles and blemishes, shrinking midsections and upper arms, and changing the color of accessories to match current fashion trends. Not all alterations, however, are to make the subject look better – in one game, players must slightly increase the size of one subject's abdomen... enough to imply that she might be pregnant, but not enough to put the magazine at risk of being sued.

http://www.playcovergirl.com/

This game also calls to mind Dove soap's viral YouTube video, Evolution. In this one minute, fifteen section time-lapsed piece, we watch as a plain (but otherwise attractive) young woman is transformed by hair, makeup, and (eventually) Photoshop into a stunning billboard beauty. The digital effects used include stretching and thinning out her neck and lowering and widening her open eyes. As the film ends, we see that the billboard is for a makeup company's cosmetic foundation.

I think it would be interesting to play this game and have a discussion about what messages altered images send. The “Cover Girl” game gives some scenarios to consider about why images are altered – implying that some celebrities refuse to talk to magazines that don't make them look good. A conversation about whether or not the billboard from the Dove video is actually false advertising might also be really interesting – after all, it wasn't the makeup that made her look that good.

The reason exercises like this are so important is because many of us don't actually think about how much “work” celebrities and models can have done in a Photoshop environment and what effect these images have on young people (especially young girls) who might aspire to look like people who don't actually look like themselves. While the examples that Kim cites in her post have the potential to alter history and people's perceptions of public figures, glossy images like the ones in “Cover Girl” and Evolution have the power to alter the way we see each other and even our own expectations of ourselves.