Wow, I've been seeing this everywhere the past couple days. I'm simultaneously glad we all get to see the reality vs. the final product and depressed that they did all that to such an already-beautiful woman.
That being said, the piece at Jezebel is hilarious.

What is WRONG with people????????

Faith is already so beautiful... but I guess she's not good enough for Redbook until she loses 25 pounds, 15 years, and a few hours out in the sun (heaven forbid women have fun in the sun instead of being kept indoors like good little ladies, to preserve their ivory skin). Argh.

Her smile seems much more real and genuine before the re-touching. You can tell her smile is real because of, not in spite of, the lines on her around her mouth and eyes.
Why would they want to make her look less real?

It's ironic too. I mean, who's reading Redbook? Frat boys? Teenage girls? Young women starting their careers?
The typical Redbook reader is what? - 50 years old? in search of a good recipe for the upcoming picnic? And yet apparently this demographic just won't settle for anything "uglier" on their magazine covers than an air-brushed Faith Hill.
Either middle-aged women have extrordinarily unrealistic and shallow expectations, or the people making editorial decisions think they are.

"Why would they want to make her look less real?"

Because real = accessible.
This is unacceptable because it means women might actually be content with their looks, and thus have no motivation to buy countless products to "improve" or "enhance" them.

I'm nearly fifty and that rag is too stodgy for moi.

When I saw this yesterday I was OUTRAGED. This needs to lead the "fair and balanced" news. Faith should sue.

If Red Book stopped airbrushing celebrities on their cover, celebrities would stop wanting to be on their cover. At the very least, publicists would advise against it.

LawFairy mentioned all the airbrushing, etc.

I saw a late-night infomercial for a product called Lumitone. It's basically a skin "brightener". I am extremely fair-skinned with freckles. If you google this product it says it gets rid of redness, etc. but on the actual commercial it said it gets rid of blemishes like freckles. Since when are freckles a blemish?
I am sure Faith has some..

this isn't top be off-topic, but it was just addressing that anything different from either bronze skin or snow white skin, people are making money off calling "blemish" or implying it's defective.

first of all, i hardly think faith hill gives a crap. if anyone sues it will be redbook for someone leaking those photos. noname is right when he says most celebs wont want to be on the cover of an un airbrushed mag. its part of their culture. its still sad though. i think shes funny looking no matter how you cut it but when you see the whole redbook cover i think the whole thing looks so fake its unbelieavable. but this is what they want us to teach our children. do you guys really think that there is a mainstream mag out there who doesnt airbrush their cover every month? i am just shocked at the outrage bc i thought everyone already knew.

Thank you for not posting that scary animated gif that the Panda posted (http://pandagon.net/2007/07/16/more-on-how-photoshopping-is-subtly-destroying-our-minds/)
That thing gave me the creeps. i thought I was going to have an epileptic seizure.

Well, let me tell you why they wanna make her look less real. The fact is people dont like seing old models, or old people on the cover of magazines, i mean its just the truth, we all dont like to see that and we are never attracted to buying anything that would look like the "before" pictures in this case. You know, I love how these blogs exist to throw the bag of anger we have inside, but lets be real to our own selves; we are the main reason why media is the way it is.

Javiita, I can only speak for MYSELF, but I'm completely bored of magazines with pretty young women on the covers. Where are the pretty young men, for one thing? You only ever see them on the cover of tabloids (un-airbrushed), exercise mags, or GQ (Blech). And I would not mind seeing an old person or two on the cover of a magazine. In fact, any mag that's likely to interest me will probably have an old person on the cover -- I'm much more likely to pick up Time or Newsweek than Cosmo (blergh... I almost vomited typing the name).

Javiita, are you kidding me?! "we are never attracted to buying anything that would look like the "before" pictures in this case." Seriously? You find unaltered Faith Hill to be unattractive? You and your type are the problem. Not the rest of us. I, for one, and *many* others are quite happy with unaltered pictures. Ever see Woman's World? They don't airbrush, and they sell PLENTY of magazines (not that I approve of them either...)

The fact is people dont like seing old models, or old people on the cover of magazines,

So you think that magazines with pictures of George Bush or the Pope on the cover don't sell? Or that Time, Newsweek and US News aren't popular magazines? Give me a fucking break already.

Sometimes they do this to men too:
Andy Roddick's arms and Faith's probably average out to normal.
I've given up on thinking that anything on a magazine cover is "real."

seeing these before-and-after images reminded me of a digital project i came across a couple years ago. it bascially allows you to see the altered pixels of (certain, chosen) retouched images. the images the project generates decontructs the retouching, by making these missing / altered pixels visible again. i think it's an interesting exploration of "polished" images - destabilizes them in a way. (now if only magazines felt that actual women were beautiful enough for the glossy covers...)

http://detouch.org/

I saw this yesterday on digg and gave it nothing more than a shrug. Being as I work in the newspaper and magazine industry, this is par for the course. Every image that's published is at the very least colour corrected, lines and blemishes are removed/ retouched etc.

And guess what, it's no big deal. If you think any image you see (especially magazine studio shoots) go from the camera to the page unaltered you're living in a dream world. They're all constructs anyway so what does it matter? Should photographers not light their shoots artificially either? Get over yourselves.

Oooh, Spike Island, you really told us. No we're not naive enough to think no airbrushing occurs. It's just DEPRESSING to know what features are considered "flaws." What lengths they'll go to in order to make cover images "perfect."

And LOL to Javiita. It really pisses me off that any WOMAN over age 30 is "old." Once you hit that point you might as well just kill yourself because as far as the world's concerned you don't exist anyway. :rolls eyes:
And nobody's attracted to "before" pictures? Huh? Faith Hill's HUSBAND is obviously attracted to the real Faith. Supermodels are not the only people shagging out there. Not everyone's repulsed by actual human beings.

What niggling prudes you neofeminists can be. If you can muster up 'outrage' over a photoshop job, your life must be pretty sweet.

I did not mean to be snippy. I just felt that some of the comments were rather hysterical; "Faith should sue" for such a minor issue. Magazine photoshops image shocker! There are more important things than this to get indignant about.

I wondered why no magazine cover ever featured a woman with a genuine-looking smile. Looking at the before and after photos, I can see that the authenticity just gets photoshopped away.

SarahMC said:

Either middle-aged women have extrordinarily unrealistic and shallow expectations, or the people making editorial decisions think they are.

I wondered, too, who the photo editor, Brian Perez, [in the memo as posted on Jezebel] thinks is the target audience for Redbook. From the memo, I get the idea he's catering to, well, kids the age of the intern (presumably early 20s), and, well, people who are sexually attracted to women! (Not the 'stodgy' post-50 crowd mentioned here!)

Because, yep, it's all about being masturbation fodder.

Realizing I probably won't see it in my lifetime, but I'd really like to see a magazine that doesn't photoshop to this extent. I mean, the memo makes horrifically insulting remarks about the physique of a woman who, quite honestly, looks great in the pre-photoshop version! The blatant misogyny that Brian Perez exhibits is inexcusable, and if this is par for the course in the industry, I'm glad I don't subscribe to any of this crap (or buy it off the newsstands, thanks).

Jo, the memo is satire.

And I just realized that I should have written, "...or the people making editorial decisions think they do."

This middle-aged woman reads Bitch, Bust, Ms, and Utne Reader. My 84 yr. old mom used to read Redbook back when she was my age now! My, how things have changed.

'Scuze me BUT: I worked in publishing for many years and we never made folks better looking through Photoshop just because we could and to say it's ubiquitous does NOT make it OK.

Dontcha love being shamed and condescended to for merely pointing out how ludicrous it is for women to have to be airbrushed to be "cover-ready?" I think the picture is just a very telling example of how warped our beauty ideals are these days...as if the unretouched Faith Hill weren't attractive enough... Sheesh.

I, for one, would love to see some unretouched folks on magazine covers. I'd love to see some women in their 30's, 40's, and 50's...not pumped full of collagen and Botox. I mean, if you're talking age, is there sexier man on earth than 40-something Stephen Colbert? *wipes drool*

"I think the picture is just a very telling example of how warped our beauty ideals are these days...as if the unretouched Faith Hill weren't attractive enough... Sheesh."

...and as if Faith Hill's unretouched looks aren't already an unattainable ideal for some women.

True, Mina.