How to become a beauty? It's very simple: correctly exposed light and good retouching. About whether its imitation is beauty, whether the end of illusions is coming and whether it is necessary to give up Photoshop, - in the material of RIA Novosti.
In June 1650, a law "against the use of cosmetics, the sticking of black flies and the wearing of immodest dresses by women" was submitted to the British Parliament. The parliamentarians probably thought what kind of scolding would await their wives at home if the law was passed, and chose to reject it.
State Historical Museum /// Desktop vanity case with toiletries (various jars, including powder, bottles, tray, funnel). France, late 18th century
Angry speeches against those who are trying to improve their appearance in one way or another have been heard over the past couple of thousand years. Medieval treatises denounced the cosmetic tricks of "deceitful" women, the archives of legal proceedings even preserved documents on attempts to file for divorce due to the fact that the bride's true appearance was improved with whitewash and blush. Puritans in the 17th century insisted that cosmetics and perfumes were sinful, embodying vanity and narcissism, and also masking impure thoughts. The very possibility of changing one's own appearance has traditionally been attributed to witches and evil spirits.
The paradox is that at the heart of modern Western civilization lies the idea, born in ancient Greece, of man as a creature capable of improving himself. At the same time, the Greeks believed that external beauty is directly related to internal beauty, and this confidence survived until the twentieth century. For example, one of the fathers of cinema, director David Work Griffith, fired actresses with acne, believing that skin imperfections were indicative of their moral flaws. However, if you believe the saying "our brother, a peasant, the wife is not an icon, but a worker," then many chose a spouse according to a completely different principle.
Bain News Service /// American Silent Film Actress Marion Davis
The twentieth century gave birth to a consumer society, where the thought of choosing your image became a matter of course. Democratization changed the meaning of the words "status" and "elite": now belonging to the upper strata of society was determined not by the right of birth and special upbringing from an early age, but by the lifestyle and appearance.
The expansion of the service industry and the development of advertising for mass-market products have made appearance overly important. The face and body began to be perceived as a constructor with which you can and even need to do something. After all, as advertisements for cosmetics in the 1930s said, "There is a corrective formula for everything that's wrong with a woman's face."
Actresses and models in advertising embodied the archetypal image of the ideal, to which everyone should strive. "Photoshop" facilitated the painstaking work of retouchers and made it possible to create the appearance of unearthly, radiant beauty. While the case concerned only advertising, few worried about it, but the emergence of social networks and the accompanying constant self-presentation forced society to revise its views.
The combination of physically visible and virtual reality turned out to be too unbearable. "Stylized" faces and bodies, not that they no longer give aesthetic pleasure, but now there are so many of them that the demands for the truth of life are louder and louder, forcing one to recall the medieval accusations of "deceit". Kylie Jenner, Rita Ora, Trisha Patas, Anastasia Kvitko and many other models: this is the list of "exposed" stars.
Along with the Instagram pages of "ideal women", accounts are gaining popularity comparing retouched photographs and images of the same women, but without the use of filters and carefully thought-out camera angles.
Two years ago, France officially adopted a law, according to which advertising photos processed in Photoshop must be marked as "retouched". The world's largest photo agency Getty Images refused to accept retouched images. However, a good photographer can always create the desired illusion by correctly exposing the light, so that we are not talking about full-fledged naturalism anyway.
Will we see the end of the era of social perfectionism? Will we start proudly showing our imperfections on social networks, as the flagships of body positivity are doing now? Hardly. Beauty is highly valued in our culture, and the Internet can be used to capitalize on it. Perhaps retouching will become less intrusive, and filters will be applied a little more bashfully, like Victorian ladies - cosmetics: so that it was completely invisible.
