Images

"Image is powerful, but also image is superficial. (...) How we look, though it is superficial and immutable, has a huge impact on our lives."

Ages ago I was working in the fashion industry and I must say that I share what Cameron Russell thinks of beauty and media. I think she’s quite brave and honest, as well as natural and clear. Expressing the reality of this business (or at least her reality) should not have been very easy, especially if we consider that she’s “been cashing out on” her beauty and she’s been partly living on it. 

I agree that photos are retouched, not only because I personally experienced it working closely with some photographers, but also because I discovered that even the world winner prize photos were retouched in contests such as World Press Photo and World Photography. Is anyone to blame? I don’t think so: after all, we’re doing the same thing with our pictures in several digital platforms such as Instagram, Facebook and Flickr to name just a few. The question for me is if we got those photographers as a model or if it is something related to our desire to appear beautiful and attractive and to be deemed as someone that is awesome and amazing. To this extent, I can see a connection with the idea of legacy Cameron Russell was talking about. 

At the same time, I think it’s true that there are people blessed with physical beauty, either because of genetics or because they are the “recipient of a legacy”. Nowadays, a pleasing body is considered to be the result of those aesthetic canons that developed and evolved throughout the centuries. Being tall, white, slender and feminine is still an asset in fashion industry, even though we can say that beauty is kind of subjective despite all the studies and analysis conducted at this regard: what it’s beautiful to me is not necessarily beautiful to you. However, these canons still exist and are pretty consistent in our time, whether we like it or not, and you can see them in every picture of any fashion magazines, billboards, newspapers and so on. On top of this, we have to keep in mind that everything that is manufactured and merchandised is made to flatter our eyes so that we have the impulse (or should we say a drive?) to buy this or that product: even the means with which they pursue an appealing result (read models) have to flatter our eyes. For this reason, image is obviously powerful and immutable, as the canons of beauty are, and, yet, it is something illusive rather than real.