[ganked from dr_nic and Neil Gaiman]
This creep’s site boasts his skill in making models look ‘beautiful’. Actually, he’s at the forefront of the trend to digitally airbrush women so that they look unnaturally symmetrical, blemish-free, pert and slim. He and his cronies are the reason teenagers diet. He is the reason so many women are anorexic, bulimic, have plastic surgery, have poor body images. It’s even worse than it used to be though: few of these models actually have the breasts and butts these teenagers are emulating. Digital enhancement is no longer just the removal of some stray hair or a few bulges: this guy is adding entire cup sizes and extra curvy butt while simultaneously removing a few sizes around the waist. These women’s bodies are impossible.
And I’m not sure whether I’m angrier at the industry or the complacency shown by average people commenting about this site who now seem to expect this. And I feel complicit: when Anita, the art director on e)mag talked to me about how she had to remove hair and smooth skin on our covers because if she didn’t, it would stand out too much and she would be pilloried as an art director, I didn’t fight it as much as I should have. We never changed a person’s shape though. Not even the model missing a finger, which you can clearly see on one of our covers.