As I was looking through pictures
of people on Facebook the other day, i noticed something. I was looking at
pictures of girls i went out with the weekend before, and in these pictures
they were looking much better than they did in person the night we went out. I
am by no means saying that they looked bad in person, but the pictures just
made them look much better looking. From the tint of their skin, the whiteness
of their teeth, the contrast of the picture, to the lighting of the area
surrounding them, it was clear to me that they had photo shopped their pictures
before they posted them. But, what i sit here and wonder is why?
This would be an example of
"docile bodies". Girls on Facebook wouldn't be so worried about
editing/photo shopping their photos if it wasn’t for the other pictures of
girls who look that much more beautiful in their photos due to photo shop or
not. Bordo states that docile bodies are "- bodies whose forces and
energies are habituated to external
regulation, subjection, transformation, 'improvement.' " Photo shopping/
editing your photos is all about transforming your look to a better one, and
improving your self-image to others who see your pictures. Your force your body
and give the energy to spend hours photo shopping your photos after loading
them onto your computer, before you post them to places like Facebook.
The need to look good in photos on Facebook
that everyone sees has become a social construction. Girls and boys will dress
up to look their best, go out with their friends, and spend most of their night
just taking pictures. The first thing they do when they get home that night is
upload them to their computer, edit them and post them to Facebook for everyone
to see. This, you could say, has become a body practice in many teen girls and
boys of our generation.
This trend of photoshopping everything to make yourself and others look better is mind boggling to me. This brings us back to the idea of the intelligible body and how people believe they have to look. The truth is,however, NOBODY truly looks like images found in many magazines,CD covers,etc. Our ideas of beauty have been majorly distorted by this. Starting from magazines, photoshopping people seems to have become more of a problem; something that seems to play with the self esteem negatively. Girls and some boys feel they do not measure up. That they constantly have to make themselves look better. The fact is, they will never truly look like that image on the front of the magazine. I look forward to the day when everyone can accept beauty as it is and realize that true beauty need not be tampered with.
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