Over the summer, I was flipping through an issue of Seventeen that had come out a few months earlier. I like Seventeen (even if I am only a few months away from kissing my teenage years “adieu”), and I like a lot of the stances they take on body image, sexuality, and other big issues. They discuss these issues in a mostly open and informed manner with real stories, giving real people voices. Seventeen has content that I actually want to read. What a concept. They are still developing some areas as a resource for the broad audience which they target, but their general goals of girl power and acceptance of individuality are pretty spot on.
I was going through a section about the most flattering shorts for every body shape or something along those lines, when an advertisement caught my eye: a Sears ad starring Vanessa Hudgens for their Bongo clothing line.
The brand name takes up a third of the page, the red block letters lined sideways along the right side. Vanessa Hudgens is surprisingly covered up for an ad in a summer issue, which is an interesting detail I didn’t initially consider. She has next to no skin showing beyond her hands and face. She’s even holding a jacket!
I could go on. However, that was not what struck me. What caught my eye was the tagline near the top.
In case you can’t read it, it says: “100% All Natural, Unretouched & Unfiltered. This is the real Vanessa Hudgens.”
First off, unretouched is apparently not a word (thanks, spell check!), but readers like me still understand what it means. It’s telling its audience that this image has not been altered in Photoshop. I’ve been learning how to use Photoshop in Digital Imaging this semester and have become a bit more familiar with just how easily an image can be manipulated, how easy it is to erase the freckles and flyaways that define an image. These little details display personality and humanity, and airbrushing is an example of how technology can take that away.
But this Sears ad emphasizes that they did not do any of that for this image. That “this is the real Vanessa Hudgens.” Is it, though?
I am happy to note that this questioning is not as uncommon as it might have been five years ago. Instead of accepting that photos always document reality, people have started to call out the falsehood of this expectation. Photos and articles about airbrushing constantly circulate the internet, featuring Photoshop faux pas so bad that one can’t help but laugh. Companies and magazines have taken to clarifying when this is true, in defiance of the now common sense that everything is Photoshopped. Even without extensive photo editing, however, I don’t think “real” is the best word for this ad.
Vanessa Hudgens may be “unretouched and unfiltered,” but she is still styled. There was a team of people working to do her hair and makeup to perfection, to ensure her ensemble matched colors and tones flawlessly. This photo was chosen out of hundreds, if not thousands, of shots taken in pursuit of the perfect angle to best flatter her body and her face. It’s posed to look natural, perhaps as though she’s walking down the street, and we just happened across her mid-stride. Completely “natural” and true to life, right?
I certainly appreciate what this ad and its inclusion in Seventeen attempts to get at, trying to display support for natural beauty in contrast to the distortions created by edits made in Photoshop or even in the filters on Instagram. But calling this real and natural? That’s not quite right.
Maybe it says something about us as the readers, as well, that we want this to be real. We want perfection to exist and someone who personifies this illusory beauty to admire. Today, all eyes are on celebrities. Their faces and private lives are splashed everywhere, from tabloids to television. I wonder, then:
Can we ever know the real Vanessa Hudgens, as this ad boasts that we see? Even though she is a celebrity, is it our business to see the real her? To know her as we would our best friends? I don’t think so. There are certain things even search engines can’t and shouldn’t be able to tell.