Found this article yesterday about Britney Spears. It stated that she had released unaltered photos from a product shoot. This is a little weird as I am pretty sure that copyright restrictions would prevent her from getting her hands on raw images straight off the camera at the shoot.

A clever publicity stunt designed to enhance both her image as a real, sympathetic person that we can all relate better too, and promote the product at the same time with empathy?
The article states:

"The 29-year-old singer made the extraordinary move in order to highlight the pressure exerted on women to look perfect."

This kind of publicity has been doing the rounds the last 6 months as the media reacts to a backlash to the established practice of digitally enhancing almost every image that gets published.

Sad fact of life folks - if the technology exists then it will be used. This is the world we live in.
Everything is altered to make the world, and the products being promoted, a rosier and more perfect reality. Maybe the intention is not there to actively set out to place unrealistic expectations on woman but this is the end result.

Hit the read more link to see the rest of the article and the before and after photos.

So what is it exactly that we are talking about. How unrealistic is the media being in relation to promoting an unobtainable body image.

EXTREMELY! This has to be one of the most damaging aspects of our society for our children, especially our young girls. They are being bombarded with images of unreal woman that are portrayed as being achievable, when in reality the woman in the photos cant even achieve this, and this is their full time job!

These fabricated images are being held up as these role models for all to aspire to. It is pretty sad, yet we are all guilty of subscribing to this concept of visual perfection. Every time we chose the slightly better looking, straighter carrot over the slightly mis-shapen one at the supermarket we are subconsciously replaying this behaviour. Perhaps we think that the straighter carrot will somehow magically taste slightly nicer? I read an article recently (that I will try and find), that stated that supermarkets in Europe are actually screening their vegetables and growers as there is no point putting out fruit and veges that are less than visually perfect as they just dont sell and get wasted. Hope that wasted food gets donated and doesn't just go in the bin (wishfull thinking).

So the Britney photos. You can see clearly that they have given her photos a serious once over.Poor her. How does this affect her body image, let alone all of the young girls that think that this level of airbrushed finish is what is expected one looks like.

Even if we know that the images are heavily enhanced, because we are so used to seeing images like these we just process them as real. Slight adjustments they may be, but as a collective set of adjustments they completely change the picture.

I saw a documentary about this subject a couple of months back and a british ex-magazine editor said that it is standard practice to "digitally edit" every single published image. This has been going on for a very long time, but recently the technology means that it is becoming very hard to distinguish between what is real and what is not.
Take a quick flick through a glossy magazine, or watch the TV commercials with a more crtical eye next time,and feel for our children. What are they to make of all of this.

These images have been taken from another website. This is not our usual practice but these images are everywhere at the moment and it seems that no-one is attributing the original source, so it is hard to seek appropriate permissions. Apologies if we offend.