There's an argument going around right now that some people want to ban the use of digital photo retouching in the fashion industry. Certain artists who have made a study of photo retouching techniques are up in arms about it. I understand. No one wants to be told that what they are doing as a form of artistic expression is somehow wrong. It smacks of censorship. It oppresses the freedom of expression that we all hold dear in the Western World. It even sounds like repression, framed a certain way, which can be argued to be a form of social malady in and of itself. The pursuit of beauty is a noble and elevated thing in our culture.

However, there's a wee little problem with the argument that the magazine industry's misuse of photo retouching is a form of artistic expression, and as such, should be free of censorship. The problem is, it's bullshit.

Even smart people feel oppressed by the unrealistic objectification of surface beauty perpetuated by the mass media. Most of us know that it's probably not the way the subject really looks. It doesn't make us idiots for feeling bad that we don't look the way the photo does. It's human nature to want to be accepted, and when all the exterior signs of acceptance require that we be physically transformed into something few of us are capable of, we feel somehow inferior. That kind of psychology can't be stamped out by sheer force of will. We can only become militant and shrill in our disapproval, or go on quietly accepting that we are not attractive.

Photo manipulation isn't in itself evil, but the way fashion and celebrity-laden magazines use it to constantly reinforce this ridiculous standard of beauty (that practically doesn't exist in anyone who isn't exactly eighteen years of age) is obscene.

You may not want to admit it to yourself, but the fact remains, the widespread prevalence of cosmetic photo retouching in the magazine industry has taken what was once a pretty bad situation and made it worse. It doesn't take brains to see through the lies on the page, but if someone lies to you enough times, it gets a little hard to ignore. And the retouched fantasy of human physical perfection is everywhere.

As a commercial artist myself, I feel for any artist who makes their living doing retouch work for magazines. Everyone has to find a way to make a living from what they're capable of doing, and not everything they do is going to be art, any more than that everything they do is necessarily morally bankrupt.

However, in an unregulated industry that continually plasters these cartoon images of humanity on every glossy surface they can find, it's up to the artists themselves to discern the difference between art and unethical hack work. Artists really have to question what they are doing or even thinking, to dare to call this sort of chicanery art.

There is no artistry involved in brushing fifty pounds and some wrinkles off of every male and female model photo that pops up into your email slot. That's just application of technique. It was around before the PC took over publishing, but air brushing model photos was rarely treated as anything other than a lesser art for jobbers without the drive to create. Or, you know, a somewhat despicable day job for those of us trying to pay the bills and get back to the real art. Doesn't make it any better, though.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but when all you can see around you are video screens and fifty foot billboards depicting models that would make a Barbie doll cry, the standard of beauty has been distorted to an unhealthy level. I don't know if banning would even work, but a movement to convince artists that prostituting themselves like this is unacceptable is long overdue.

Parts of the fashion industry are starting to reform themselves by insisting that models be a certain minimum weight to work. The fashion magazine industry has to see reason and follow suit. It's the 21st Century and we're still lionizing starving waifs and damning anyone with even an average body shape. The fear of body fat is alive and well, but we're not feeling any better. It's not beauty we're seeking. It's conformity, and the most unhealthy form of conformity we have; body image and self-loathing.

As a great lover of the human body in nearly all of its forms*, I'll be the last to call for a complete ban on any art being done that portrays the human body in a glorified manner. Photography of the human body can indeed be art. However, when a photo retouch artist abuses the very makeup of human anatomy to portray some idealized version of beauty, be it thinner thighs and hips or a bigger bust or tighter buns, they are not making art; they are jerking off. Masturbation is acceptable; even necessary, but it doesn't deserve to be called art, no matter how masterfully it is done. 'Art' that serves such a narrow definition of beauty isn't art. It's propaganda.

Airbrushing a few freckles or a mole out of a photo is somewhat questionable, and the problem probably starts there, but it's not overly unhealthy to eliminate such details from a piece (if the subject wishes it). Artists have done it for centuries. But it's that same aesthetic that allows us to pervert the notion of what human beauty is, and it's become so prevalent that modern artists see no contradictions in portraying young, lithe figures in everything they do, transforming every figure they draw or photograph into some fantasy creature.

It seems harmless on the surface of it. But for anyone who weighs a good ten to one hundred or more pounds over their biomass index number, the reality is much clearer; you are subhuman. You are ugly. You are unworthy of consideration. We're all so convinced of this that we rarely dare to speak out and protest the point, even when it affects us personally. We find ourselves agreeing with it. We believe ourselves to be failures, unworthy of love.

Don't believe me? Ask someone whom you think could stand to lose a few pounds how it makes them feel to be constantly bombarded with images of so-called beauty. And when you're finished doing that, ask someone you think is average if they worry about their weight. Then try someone whom you think of as perfect. I promise you that, if you get honest answers at all, they'll all tell you the same thing; fat is hideous, and they all live in fear of being labelled fat.

Now, not all retouching is about removing pounds. Some of it is about wrinkles, blemishes and scars. Some of it is even about salvaging a really good photo that has some flaw due to a condition of the shoot or the storage that marred or damaged the image in some way. Some retouching is simply about adding some truly fantastical feature for a genuinely artistic reason, like painting wings or horns or fluorescent eyes onto the image. These are all fairly valid reasons for retouch art. I think people should get comfortable with imperfections like scars and warts and such, but in the main, it's not making people feel that objective beauty is unhealthy; just unrealistic.

But what we're seeing in photo retouching these days goes far beyond that to virtual body sculpting. Again, nothing new, but it's not to be applauded; it's grotesque. It shows us at our most shallow. There is nothing beautiful about telling everyone on the planet that they stopped being beautiful the day after they got their first wrinkle or had to throw away the jeans they wore their last day of high school.

And that's what is being said with all of this. Women and men both are made to feel inadequate if they don't look like John Barrowman or Angelina Jolie. And in the fashion industry, even they would suffer. You must be perpetually young and thin and unblemished and perfect, or you are Not Good Enough.

I've ranted too long. I apologize. I'm not condemning the young or the naturally thin. I've seen young men and women who were comfortably slim and had perfect skin, and they were indeed quite pretty. But I've seen a lot more who looked average, or worse, ghastly from starvation and harsh chemicals and makeup, damaging themselves to be one of the cool, and making their last years of youth a misery. And then we carry that load with us through the rest of our lives. We never forgive ourselves for slipping out of shape or showing visible signs of age. We repeat the cycle of self-loathing. It needs to stop.


* I still squick a little at severe deformities, though I don't wish to hurt or insult anyone with such a deformity. I feel for you. I know how it feels to be treated like a sub-human or an undesirable, and I don't have any such deformities. I wish you love and happiness.