FMP Research: Magazines

Fig. 1 Magazines I (author's own)

I started to flick through magazines and needless to say, I have come across a lot of examples where women are being shaped in order to fit an ideal image of beauty. If you look at figure 1 and 2, you can clearly see the absence of wrinkles, blemishes, scars, spots and lines. Neck lines are removed, eye lines are softened, complexions are cleaned up and the chins are trimmed.

Fig. 2 Magazines II (author's own)

These women are beautiful, there's no denying of that. But beauty is not defined through perfection, plus, what is perfection anyway? Why do these women not even have one line of character on their faces? Something, a sign that says. "I'm human too, and my imperfections make me beautiful."

Fig. 3 Magazines III (author's own)

Figure 3 shows another one of my sketchbook pages, this time the magazine images were found in men's magazines. I find that in a lot of advertising, women are almost dehumanised, only sections of their bodies are being focused on, i.e. breasts, torso, legs, etc. even when the product in hand is irrelevant to the human body. They really must mean it when they say, "sex sells".

Fig. 4 Magazines IV (author's own)

Figure 4 is an image of a few examples of women feeling the need to alter themselves to look a certain way. Of course what's most important is self comfort, and being happy with your body, so if this means losing a few pounds, then so be it. But at the same time it's quite upsetting to see that people are given more credit and attention for looking a certain way, it's because of this that we can't tell whether someone is genuinely doing something for themselves or whether they're doing it to conform to norms, to be accepted and to become this so called "ideal".