EATING DISORDERS AND THE MEDIA: H&M USES PHOTO-DOCTORED MODELS

Don’t be surprised if today you walk into your local McDonalds or Burger King and are asked “would you like fries with that coke” from a 6 foot tall blonde supermodel named Svenka. It looks like computers are the ones who are “striking a pose”, and “working it” for the photo lenses these days, and […]

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Don’t be surprised if today you walk into your local McDonalds or Burger King and are asked “would you like fries with that coke” from a 6 foot tall blonde supermodel named Svenka.

It looks like computers are the ones who are “striking a pose”, and “working it” for the photo lenses these days, and that’s some pretty hard competition for any young girl hoping to strike it big on the cover of a magazine.

It’s actually quite convenient for advertisers,designers, and the fashion industry. Why sit through hours of looking for that girl who has the perfect body to wear your newest slim cut blazer, skinny jeans, with a lime green accent scarf, when you can computer generate a perfect body to wear it.

An even more genius idea is to take the face of a model and stick it on that body making her look Forshizzell.

If this sounds like some really creepy movie that you would find late at night on Showtime, you are mistaken.

All of this photo doctoring, virtual mannequin, computer generated torsos, arms, and thighs, might be the reason you skipped lunch today. It might also be responsible for you running that extra hour because you felt inferior, or having sex with the lights off because you thought your body was not up to snuff.

If all else it might have caused millions of women around the world to see a model with this nothing less than perfect body wearing a bikini and crumbling inside because she knows she will never be “all of that.”

Recently H&M was outed for doing this, and it has caused quite an uproar. I had people flooding my emails with this link about it, with nothing less than WTF?? WTF?? WTF??

I myself was not surprised a bit. I have known for years how models have been photo shopped to look thinner, blemish free, and toned.

I will tell you right now that H&M is not the first and they won’t be the last culprits in this fallacy.

Claiming that creating a perfect fit for a piece of fabric enables the viewer to focus more on the outfit rather than who is wearing it is… Bullshit!

If that was the case anybody with a face could be a model. Me,you, the girl next door.. Sign us up! Are we stupid H&M? The faces you are putting on these models are still gorgeous, but you are saving yourself that step of finding a perfect human body, which by the way is impossible. Matching a perfect body to that face is masterpiece H&M..clap clap clap. Here’s the breakdown.. It means money, plain and simple it’s cash in your 27.99 skinny jean pockets.

Models are pretty because it makes clothes, jewelry, cars,beer, heck even cornflakes look more appealing.

You created this hocus pocus dominocus to trick us, because these bodies being more perfect enhance your item making the sale more viable.

Your sales might go up, but you just put a giant lesion in the already wounded self-esteem of women around the world.

Is it not enough that we have to look at  98 pound 0-2  sized fashion models on the runway who are supposed to represent the 140 pound size 8-10′s average woman?

I myself see a positive spin to this whole thing. We as a society can choose to beduped, or we can choose to be wise and say the Emperor is wearing no clothes, or in this case the fake fashion model is wearing a bathing suit.

From now when we see things for what they are ,knowing that things are not as they appear could psychologically tell us that we are comparing ourselves to nothing less than a bunch of  supermodels named Gigabytes, Exabytes,Kibabytes,Megabytes, and Data Transfer.

If and when you can see this for what it is, I believe it can free you to take a breath and say..you know what nobody is this perfect, because nobody is just a computer.

It reminds me of one of my favorite movies the Matrix, (spoiler alert) Keanu Reeves character “Neo” aka “Mr. Anderson” has to fight enemy agents in a surreal environment. At the end he finally sees them for what they are: nothing more than computer programs. Seeing this makes him feel humanly superior and he suddenly realizes he is essentially controlling a video game.

I hope all  of you can find your Neo moment and realize that you don’t have to be swayed, fooled, or mislead by these secret agents in your next H&M catalog wearing a polka dotted bikini.

MATRIX-FINAL FIGHT

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