Airbrushing and How Celebrities Reacted. Laura
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Altered Consciousness/ Awareness Case Study: Airbrushing and how Celebrities reacted. Laura Madigan 14149567 1 Introduction: This essay will focus on how airbrushing is a controversial subject, it is causing a lot of body issues for celebrities while it also creates body issues for the public especially teenage girls, as they are, exposed to ‘altered’ images daily by magazines and social media. It became known to me how much an issue airbrushing was when I listened to Jameela Jamil’s podcast with, Krishnan Guru Murthy, focusing on ‘banning airbrushing, the Kardashians and her traumatic teens’. After, listening to the podcast I decided to explore this controversial subject in this essay, I found huge amounts of videos, articles, campaigns that were fighting against airbrushing. This is a clear example of how technological determinism and social constructivism can cause negative affects when information is altered and false while it is being spread. Jameela Jamil, highlighted many controversial issues about airbrushing during her podcast, how it can add pressure to the young generation to look a certain way. She discusses how everyone now has access to airbrushing because of the developments of technology, “Everyone’s got access to airbrushing. Airbrushing- which I think is one of the foulest things to have happened to women in the last couple of decades” (Jamil, Podcast). Since listening to the podcast I have come across many other female’s in the public eye expressing their own hatred on airbrushing, it is a common phenomenon, for celebs to speak and call out media organisations for alternating their photographs today. Many female celebrities have called out magazines for airbrushing this year alone, such as, Lili Reinhart, Camilla Mendes, Zendaya, Lady Gaga, Jade Thirlwall Emily Ratajkowski. All celebrities I have mentioned are held up in the public eye as being woman that are portrayed as perfect. Airbrushing has become an enemy of celebrities and many of the public, it is used to portray what media thinks is the perfect woman, “Spotless skin, toned bodies, silky hair, and not a wrinkle in sight” (Saint, Clair, 1). Airbrushing has been around for decades, it arises as an issue in the media industry every few months as another public figure, calls out a magazine for photoshopping their pictures. For this essay I want to explore the cases of celebrities who have affected by airbrushing, also how it affects society and what magazines and newspapers are responsible for airbrushing and why does it happen. Video of Jameela Jamil 2 Fig 1. Mind Map Actor Network Theory(ANT) ANT is a social theory where the social and natural worlds exists in a network of relationships. It argues that all factors in a social situation are involved, and no other factors affect how the relationship works. ANT objects the notion of technological determinism and model of diffusion Vs Social constructionism and reductionism. The theory was founded by Michel Callon, Bruno Latour and John Law. ANT combines two words, actor and theory, these words are usually considered opposite to each other. ANT is an attempt to give analytical tools for explaining the very process by which society is constantly reconfigured. What distinguishes it from other constructivist approaches is its explanation of society in the making, in which science and technology play a key part. (Callon,1). ANT joins the factors of non-human and human factors into consideration. It does not celebrate the idea that there is a difference in kind between people on the one hand, objects on the other. It denies that people are necessarily special. (Law, 4). Actor Network Theory does not typically try to explain why a network exists, it is more interested in the infrastructure of actor networks, how they are formed, how they can fall apart. Both non- human and human are equal In this sections I will be discussing the human and non-human factors in this controversy. 3 Non-Human (Common to most cases) Magazine’s Magazines are a publication, which is printed and can also be found online, they are published in a regular schedule and have a variety of content. Numerous magazines have been called out by many celebrities in the past decade and more, because of their use of airbrushing and photoshopping without the celebrities’ permission. This has caused a lot of controversy in the media world as it gives added pressure for people to look and act a certain way. These magazines are giving altered images of celebs, without consequences. Popular pop culture magazines such as GQ, Cosmopolitan, are all involved in this controversy as they have been accused of altering images. Podcast A podcast is an episodic series of digital audio or video file which a user can listen online or download. They can be available for subscription or direct availability, they are found on computers, mobile phones and portable media players, the files are audio formatted. They can be found on many websites/apps such as Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube. Jameela Jamil’s podcast she did with Krishnan Guru Murthy discussing, banning airbrushing, the Kardashians and her traumatic teens’, recently sparked the debate about airbrushing and how it is affecting society. During the podcast Jameela was very honest with her views on airbrushing and expressed the damaging affects it can have on people. Social Media Social Media are interactive computer-mediated technologies that ease the creation and sharing of information, ideas, career interests and other forms of expression via virtual communities and networks. Social media is available everywhere in the world making it a vital part of communication. Celebrities have used social media to call out magazines and newspapers for using airbrushing and photoshopping on their photos without getting permission to do so. Magazines and newspapers also use social media to promote their images and stories, this then causes more images to spread, with leads to more controversy. Social media was used to spread awareness about campaigns against airbrushing. Newspapers A newspaper is a periodical publication holding written information about current events. Newspapers can cover a wide variety of fields such as politics, business, sports and the arts. Newspapers were also brought up during the controversy for airbrushing as they had been altering photos. This has caused a lot of controversy in the media world as it gives added pressure for people to look and act a certain way. These newspapers are giving altered images of celebs, without consequences. The main newspapers that have been airbrushing are the Daily Mail, The Sun, Star and many more tabloid newspapers. 4 Human Jameela Jamil Is a 32-year-old actress and presenter from London. She started her career out as a presenter on T4, on channel 4. She is now an actress in the USA, in the sitcom “The Good Place” Lili Reinhart & Camilla Mendes Lili Reinhart and Camilla Mendes are both young TV actresses on the American TV show ‘Riverdale’ They both do multiple promo work for the television show together Zendaya Zendaya is a 22-year-old American actress, singer, model and back up dancer. She has over 53 million followers on Instagram. She is looked up to from millions of young teenagers. Lady Gaga Lady Gaga is a 32-year-old is an American actress and singer. She has had huge success in the music industry she has sold 27 million albums and 156 singles. She also as the lead female in ‘A Star is Born’. Jade Thirlwall Jade is a 25-year-old singer from England, she is part of the four-piece girls group, ‘Little Mix’, along with Perrie Edwards, Jesy Nelson and Leigh-Anne Pinnock. They won the X- Factor in 2011 and since then they have been very successful in the music industry. Jade also interest in supporting the LGBTQ community and regularly campaigns for them. Emily Ratajkowski Is a 27-year-old American actress and model, she first rose to fame when she stared in Robin Thicke’s music video for ‘Blurred Lines’. Since then she has become an extremely successful model, she works with brands such as Versace and has also starred in many film and TV shows. 5 Each Case: I will be exploring each case, separately in relation the human and non-human factors that were involved with each celebrities’ case. This will help to see what each case has in common and whether it has relation to why airbrushing is used, it will also highlight whether all factors are needed to influence the public. I will discuss each case and their human and non-factors Jameela Jamil She is the vocal point to this essay as, without her podcast she recently did, the issue of airbrushing would not have been brought up during this time-period. Non-Human Podcast: Jameela used the Podcast series ‘Ways to Change the World” by Krishnan Guru Murthy as her platform to speak about the issues she had with airbrushing. She believes that airbrushing is completely wrong and needed to be spoken about. She believes it is completely wrong to show a false perception to the world. Jamil says during the podcast, “Put airbrushing in the bin” because it is “disgusting tool that has weaponised”. Airbrushing /Photo Editing: This is the software used to enhance, edit and airbrush photographs. Jameela believes this software should be illegal as it is the reason photos are able to be edited. She argues that is completely wrong to have access to free to use software everywhere. She believes it can have a negative on people’s body images. Magazines/Newspapers: Magazines and newspapers are the publishers of most of these airbrushed/edited photographs.