The Ethics of Using Image Manipulation on Magazine Covers Essay Example

The Ethics of Using Image Manipulation on magazine covers. You hear that beauty is only skin-deep, that it fades with time or is in the eye of the beholder. Every year people spend billions of dollars on products to try to look beautiful. Every day you see ads in newspapers and on magazine covers with beautiful men and woman that have been digitally altered. All the while wondering things like what kind of makeup is she wearing, is she really that thin, how does he get his teeth so white? The answer is airbrushing or digitally altering the photo to remove pores, fine lines, or the bags under their eyes and may other items that most people do not even notice. With people seeing these images almost from birth now, is it ethical to use these false images as the perfect body type when it is not even their real body? With all the editing done to them should there be a disclaimer “warning digitally edited don’t try this at home”? Image manipulation is a tool used by magazines and newspapers to make their models look more appealing to the public. There are many tools that take the image and put it in a computer then with programs like Photoshop or Paintshop pro they remove unwanted thing like in this photo of Country Singer Faith Hill; the first image is the non-altered image the second is after they manipulated it.

As you can see there has been a major rework done on this photo they have removed bone, skin, fat, muscle, and have even added an arm. Looking at the changed photo you can see that this body type is impossible to achieve in nature; look at the left arm you can see that her elbow would be below her waist and that it would be thinner than the bone itself. The cover of this magazine seems to be applauding her on her weight with a title of “The new Skinny Pills yes they work” implying that others could look this way when the publishers know that you cannot. In the United States people spend billions on beauty aids and surgeries