PHOTOSHOPPING GONE MAD: THE SKINNY ON THE FAKE & REAL IMAGES OF MODELS ON THE INTERNET...[UPDATED]

I received the following comment from one of my readers tonight. It's important, and I want to share it with you:

"Anonymous said...

Great Blog Medusa...keep it up!

I'm sorry to say that some of these pictures have the wrong Fake and Real tags attached to them.

I don't know where they came from, but aside from the "few" that look like they came from tabloids/rags,Perez-type who would want to over emphasize the headline..."Looks who dying of anorexia!", most of these are backwards. I am in the Fashion industry, and am involved with "photoshopping" the images and I know for a fact that the very sad fact is that most models, famous or not are horribly anorexic. We have to go in and airbrush OUT the rib-bones and round out their arms and legs to make them look more normal and even toned, or no one would buy the clothes/jewelry/Designer if they saw the real model. Look at your comments....no one wants to buy the stuff on the anorexic models, but the ones called Real, will sell. They are fake.

Go back up and look at these examples:

--If you look at the girls having a water fight, the "real" image posted is actually the fake...it's the final printed article with the copy already placed in the upper right. The fake was the the first unretouched shot.

--For the girl boxing, you can see that the "real" pic is actually the retouched fake one. See the bikini wasn't silver enough, and they made it much more bright silver and bigger, along with the high heels.

--One of the first photos...the girl on the catwalk in the cut-out white outfit, the "real" one is the "fake". See how in the second, they made the fabric a perfect square and a perfect white and moved the fabric around?

The awful, sad reality is that those models are REAL, and DYING everyday from anorexia. The "Brands" cannot sell clothes of women who unfortunately look like Holocaust victims, so we add enough curves and cleavage, and of course make the CLOTHES look great in order to sell the items.

I would redo this section to show how the ugly tabloids do the disgusting "skinny" photoshopping, but the "Advertisers/Retailers" HAVE to make the models look better and with a little bit more curves...certainly NEVER rib cages showing..

This article will have HUGE effect if all the girls/women out there can actually see how horrible their model idols look in reality without us going in there to add fat and curves to make them appealing. Yes, those thin models that people envy are starving themselves, but because they are popular, they get the jobs, and we retouch almost everything about the pictures. We even change necks, and legs and arms from one model to another. Nothing is impossible nowadays. I remain anonymous to not giveaway who I am, but I have worked on photos of all the models, including a ton of Victoria Secret's models, and most of them have ribs very pronounced and elbows huge compared to their upper arms...so we fix it. Every protruding "bony" body part is rounded out.

If you would like my professional opinion on how these tags need to be changed, please feel free to post and somehow we can talk.

July 15, 2009 7:47 PM"

Because of the comments made by Anonymous, I have removed all the "fake" and "real" tags on the photos below.

And many thanks, Anonymous, for taking the time to share your knowledge and experience with all of us, and for taking the time to post.

MY ORIGINAL POST:

The Internet is rife with photoshopped images of skeletal models. Unfortunately, many young girls cruising the Internet, who aspire to have stick-thin figures like the models in the images they see, begin deadly starvation diets, not realizing that the pictures of many of these models have been photoshopped...and some drastically.

Here are just a few examples of these photoshopped pictures...
























































































Be careful out there. Sometimes things are not what they seem...

Links:
Google images
http://jeanluc.croix.free.fr/

STARVATION...

Young woman in Nazi concentration camp

Anorexia

Survivor of the Nazi death camp, Auschwitz

Anorexia

Survivor of Auschwitz concentration camp

Anorexia

Young Russian girl in concentration camp

Anorexia

Starving men in Nazi concentration camp

Anorexia

Starving Romanian children in Auschwitz

Anorexia

Buchenwald concentration camp victim

Anorexia

Starving men in Nazi concentration camp during World War 2

Anorexia

Starving woman who survived a Nazi death camp

Links:

www.holocaustresearchproject.org/
www.haverford.edu

ADAM LAMBERT SINGS "MAD WORLD" IN NYC THIS MORNING...

American Idol runner-up, Adam Lambert, on Rockefeller Plaza (May 28, 2009):




The Gary Jules' and Michael Andrews' cover of Mad World for the soundtrack to the movie Donnie Darko




And from 1982, the original written by Roland Orzabal and sung by bassist Curt Smith of the British band, Tears for Fears (ah, the memories of dancing to this in the clubs):




Awesome song, awesome performances.

BULIMIC & USING SYRUP OF IPECAC TO PURGE? IT'S DEADLY...

The late Karen Carpenter was an Ipecac abuser. She used it extensively to induce vomiting, and it was a primary factor in her death. The alkaloid emetine from the Ipecac syrup had caused severe damage to her heart, which eventually caused Karen to go into cardiac arrest, resulting in her death.

Karen Carpenter


Ipecac is made from the dried root of a plant called ipecacuanha, which is grown in Brazil. Syrup of ipecac is made from the dried roots and underground stems of the plant, and when ipecac is swallowed, a substance in it called cephaeline irritates the stomach and causes vomiting.

Syrup of Ipecac

Ipecac is toxic. It is intended to facilitate vomiting in an individual who has ingested poison or overdosed on medication. Ipecac is for a single use only and is never to be used on a regular basis.

Many bulimics use syrup of ipecac in order to purge the contents of their stomach after an eating binge. Bulimics often use it if they have difficulty inducing vomiting. Chronic abuse of ipecac occurs when their gag reflex becomes damaged, which makes self-induced vomiting difficult.

Repeated use of ipecac can cause very serious medical conditions:

Muscle weakness and wasting. The toxins in ipecac build in the muscles of the body, leading to muscle wasting. The heart, most dangerously, suffers this muscle wasting (which is irreversible), increasing the risk of complete heart failure

Fatigue and shortness of breath (common to most bulimics)

Tachycardia (an abnormal, and potentially dangerous, rapid heart rate)

Cardiomyopathy, a condition in which the heart muscle can no longer pump sufficient blood. Ipecac-induced cardiomyopathy is a factor in many bulimia nervosa fatalities

Dehydration and electrolyte imbalances/abnormalities

Risk of kidney, liver and heart disease

Cardiac arrest

Cardiac arrhythmias

Seizures

Shock

Hemorrhaging

Blackouts

High blood pressure

Respiratory complications

Tears in the esophagus or stomach lining and vomiting blood

Death

Below is the case of a 17-year-old girl who died from ipecac abuse:

"PEDIATRICS Vol. 78 No. 3 September 1986, pp. 412-416

Death Due to Chronic Syrup of Ipecac Use in a Patient With Bulimia

Russell J. Schiff MD1, Carol L. Wurzel MD1, Sandra C. Brunson MD1, Ilene Kasloff MD1, Michael P. Nussbaum MD1, and Shawn D. Frank MSW1

1 From the Schneider Children's Hospital, Long Island Jewish Medical Center, New Hyde Park, New York


A 17-year-old girl presented with malaise, weakness, palpitations, dysphagia, myalgias, and weight loss of 1 month's duration. Within 24 hours of admission to the hospital, she had hypotension unresponsive to medical management, intractable congestive heart failure, and arrhythmias; she died. Several empty bottles of syrup of ipecac were later found among her belongings. Syrup of ipecac is commonly used to induce emesis in patients who had ingested toxic substances. The chief pharmacologic property of this agent is due to its alkaloid component, emetine. There have been many previous reports of death due to emetine poisoning in patients receiving ipecac fluid extract and in those treated for amoebic dysentery. However, the literature cites only three case reports of fatalities secondary to chronic ipecac use as a means of losing weight. This is the first report of a death due to chronic ipecac use in an adolescent patient with bulimia. Emetine persists in the body for long periods, and in patients who have ingested it chronically, emitine is extremely toxic, specifically to cardiac smooth and skeletal muscles. With an increased awareness of the importance of weight control in the adolescent age group, the physician must carefully evaluate these patients for the use of emetics.

Key Words: syrup of ipecac • emetine • bulimia • cardiomyopathy • adolescent

Submitted on July 23, 1985
Accepted on December 31, 1985"

Karen Carpenter's Mausoleum

To read more about Karen Carpenter, please click here:

KAREN CARPENTER: INTO THE SLIPSTREAM OF ANOREXIA & BULIMIA

Remember...Ipecac kills.

Links:

http://www.gwdocs.com/health/1131123674555.html

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/250454/the_dangers_of_ipecac_abuse.html

http://psy.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/reprint/47/2/167.pdf

BREAKING NEWS: HYDROXYCUT CAN KILL YOU...

Click: Weighing the Facts: Hydroxycut Recall

Link:

http://weighingthefacts.blogspot.com/2009/05/hydroxycut-recall-fda-warns-of-health.html

A NEW GIRL GUIDE BADGE FOR SELF-ESTEEM? HAS GUIDING GONE MAD?

Darrin Klimek/Getty Images

As I was reading The Globe and Mail this morning, I came across an article written by the very talented Margaret Wente. Entitled "Not every girl can be a Winner," I was dumbstruck that the Girl Guides now have a self-esteem badge. Say what?

In my youth, I spent years as a member of Brownies and Girl Guides. I traipsed through the woods with the rest of the pack, trying to light fires by rubbing two sticks together in the pouring rain, suffering cuts and scratches and burns from campfires, getting lost in the wood (still can't figure out how a compass works), near-drowning in canoes on choppy lakes, and learning how to do the sheep shank and the round-turn-and-two-half-hitches knots.

Summers were spent at Girl Guide Camp building lean-tos and roughing it in the woods. It was a rough-and-tumble life and I loved every minute of it. Nary was a mention made of my having to study up to earn a self-esteem badge.

I'm sure Lady Baden Powell is rolling over in her grave over this latest development.

Here is Margaret Wente's excellent take on this:

"THE SELF-ESTEEM MOVEMENT"

"Not every girl can be a winner"

"I thought Girl Guides was about doing stuff. I don't remember being encouraged to love myself"

MARGARET WENTE

"What's the best way to build self-esteem among adolescent girls? The Girl Guides think they know. They're adding a new self-esteem badge! Girls will earn it by participating in something called the Love Yourself Challenge, which involves things like group discussions about how much they hate their bodies, and why it's bad to stick your finger down your throat. Girls who meet the challenge will get a crest that depicts a thick body, a thin body and an average body, plus a heart, which is there to remind you to love yourself.

Funny, but I thought Girl Guides was about doing stuff. I thought it was about summer camp and canoeing, swimming across the lake, tying knots, building fires in the rain, pitching tents and learning how to apply a tourniquet in case someone is bleeding to death. I don't remember anything about being encouraged to love myself.

But times have changed, I guess. Today, the low self-esteem of adolescent girls is a veritable industry. To be sure, it's a vile time of life - much harder than it is for boys, and even more awful for girls today than it was when I was that age. By the time a girl is 12, she's been saturated by media images of artificial feminine perfection. She's obsessively self-conscious. Her body and her emotions are completely out of control. She needs and wants to conform socially, to be like her peers, and she's convinced she doesn't measure up. Is she pretty? Is she cool? Is she wearing the right clothes? Suddenly she finds herself in a world of relentless social and sexual comparisons.

Still, it wasn't all that easy way back when. I remember studying myself in a mirror for hours at a time, wondering if anyone could possibly call me pretty. Mostly I concluded no. I was chunky and felt hideously awkward. My girlfriends and I all loathed ourselves, even though many of us were kind, beautiful and brilliant. Today, all of us would be prime candidates for eating disorders. Thankfully, they were not epidemic then. Because they didn't have a name and nobody discussed them, we weren't aware that it was possible to have one. (A few of us did anyway.)

There are many, many explanations for the low self-esteem of adolescent girls, which range from the toxic media culture to the subtle "silencing" of residual sexism. Personally, I think a lot of it is hormones. Girls go nuts, just as boys do, only in different ways, until their hormones settle down.

One thing I know for sure, though. The self-esteem movement is a crock.

Much of the modern self-esteem enterprise - which basically consists of telling every kid how fabulous she or he is - is completely hollow. We go to absurd lengths to turn every kid into a winner. One 10-year-old I know is thrilled because she won a High Silver at a dance competition last week. That sounded great - until I learned that above High Silver comes Gold, and then High Gold, and then a brand-new category called Platinum. Like grades, prizes have undergone rampant inflation. The idea is to make everyone feel special, whether they are or not.

Does this work? Well, no, not really. For a long time, people thought that kids who felt good about themselves would get higher grades. They don't. They only feel entitled to them. Nor do they commit fewer crimes, smoke less, do less drugs, or have less of what we might call inappropriate sex. In fact, it tends to work the other way around. Getting better grades improves your self-esteem. We also think that bullies have low self-esteem, but it isn't so. Their self-esteem tends to be very high.

Even though girls now outperform boys in school, efforts to improve the self-esteem of girls have been especially strenuous. These efforts tend to feature inauthentic praise, easy tasks, solely positive feedback, and other "schools without failure" gambits. All of that can backfire badly. One day those girls will be exposed to reality. That can be a nasty shock - especially if they have never been allowed to fail, or asked to do something really hard. They won't have the emotional persistence or fortitude to deal with it.

Boys, at least, get some lessons in resilience and persistence on the playing field. They learn to suck it up and be a man. Girls could use some more of that. (Just as boys could use more sensitivity to other people.) Instead, we give them structured, easy tasks and go out of our way to make them feel good. All this reinforces their adolescent tendency to act helpless, instead of competent. And then we wonder why they don't feel more empowered.

Among the biggest critics of the self-esteem movement is cognitive psychologist Martin Seligman. "We now think we should inject self-esteem directly into our young people, as opposed to producing warranted self-esteem, which I believe comes from doing well with the people you love, doing well in sports, doing well in school," he said. In his view, self-esteem exercises are a menace to society.

In some cultures, especially Asian ones, high self-regard is thought to be a flaw, not a virtue. Our culture used to believe that too. We used to call such people "conceited" or "full of themselves." One problem is that they have trouble seeing the world around them as it really is. They imagine that other people share their high opinion of themselves, even when other people think they're jerks. "People who have elevated or inflated views of themselves tend to alienate others," wrote social psychologist Roy Baumeister, who used to believe in the importance of instilling self-esteem, until he reviewed all the research.

The irony is that the Girl Guides themselves invented the best way to empower girls. Challenge them, build their competencies and give them the experience of authentic accomplishment. Take them away from the boys, so that they don't have to be obsessed with how they look, or whether some boy likes them.

"They need to learn the dedication you need to struggle through something," says Jessie Barrie, a remarkable young Canadian who is the director of experiential education at a top school in the United States. She has seen adolescent girls transformed by three-week wilderness trips. "It's essential with girls that you put them in a situation that truly does challenge," she says. "On the first day, they completely believe they can't do it. But slowly you give them the tools and building blocks, and they do." They get cold and wet and sore. They survive for 21 days without a shower and no makeup or clean clothes.

"The social playing field is levelled, because all of them are dirty and they all have greasy hair, and they all have to depend on the group to get through. It doesn't matter if the cool girl and the dorky girl are in the same group," she says. "They know for certain they've accomplished all this by themselves. And the next time they face adversity, they'll remember when something seemed impossible, and they succeeded."

I know that feeling. I was 12, at Girl Scout camp, on my first overnight canoe trip. We found a campsite and pitched our tents, and then the rain came down. It was torrential. We were soaked to the skin. But there was no wimping out. We built a giant fire in the rain and cooked a giant pizza over it, all by ourselves. Age 12 was the worst year of my life. But that night, I was completely happy."


Bravo, Margaret.


Link:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20090502.COWENT02ART2013/TPStory/TPComment/?query=