<p><em>NOTE:&#0160; I&#39;m posting some old stuff until I&#39;m back in September - Enjoy!&#0160; Or ignore!&#0160; Whatever!<br /><br /></em></p>

<p>My first job out of college was in marketing for a very large, very
french, very hip cosmetic company.&#0160; Many
people are fascinated by my past life and want to know how to get a job
there.&#0160; But there are always the people who
want to know if I feel guilty because I was promoting unattainable
standards of beauty.&#0160; They want to know if I felt personally
responsible for the lack of self-esteem in today&#39;s young women.</p>

<p>No I didn&#39;t and I still don&#39;t.</p>

<p>In fact, I LOVE the beautiful advertisements in women&#39;s magazines.
It was uplifting to come to work every morning and be surrounded by
posters of gorgeous faces.&#0160; Really!&#0160; We would ooh and aah every time a
beautiful ad was unveiled.&#0160; It was cool.&#0160; And I never compared myself
to those images.&#0160; I did compare myself to the models pre-airbrushing.
I mean they&#39;re still gorgeous, but they get pimples and cellulite, just
like us.&#0160; Really.</p>

<p>To me, these ads are works of art, not a to do list.&#0160; It has been
said before, but it bears repeating:&#0160; PEOPLE DON&#39;T LOOK LIKE THAT.&#0160; I
love the Cindy Crawford quote &quot;“Even I don&#39;t wake up looking like Cindy
Crawford.”&#0160; No model or starlet does.&#0160; I saw it for myself.&#0160; Photoshop
and airbrush artists are amazing.&#0160; Also, most of the models are 14.
I&#39;ll never forget the first time I saw and ad pre-completion.&#0160; It was
for an eye cream.&#0160; The model was 14 and gorgeous.&#0160; She had a huge smile
in the ad, and I thought it was beautiful.&#0160; Then a few weeks later I
saw the <em>real </em>finished product.&#0160; The huge smile was still there,
but you know those lines you get under your eyes when you smile?&#0160; (Yes
you do.&#0160; We all get them.&#0160; The Boy gets them, and he&#39;s not even one.)
They were gone.&#0160; The shadows under her eyes were gone as well.&#0160; It was
freaky.&#0160; I mean, the girl was 14, and she was selling eye cream to 40
year-olds!&#0160; It felt weird, but I was an idealistic 19 year old at the
time.</p>

<p>I quickly grew to appreciate the images for what they are.&#0160; They&#39;re
aspirational images meant to be beautiful and illustrate a fantasy.&#0160; I
still like them, although I can see how people who haven&#39;t been exposed
to the inner workings of the advertising industry could be misled.
Don&#39;t be. </p>

<p>Photoshop isn&#39;t going away anytime soon (and thank God for that!&#0160; I
just airbrushed a booger out of The Boy&#39;s nose in a photo for the
grandparents.)&#0160; Enjoy the photos in ads and magazine covers, they can
be breathtaking.&#0160; Just do it with a healthy dose of scepticism.</p>

<p>Here&#39;s a <a href="http://www.i-am-bored.com/bored_link.cfm?link_id=14537">link</a>
to a website that illustrates just what can be done to a photo of a
real person (and a pretty one at that.)&#0160; You&#39;d think they&#39;re
exaggerating, but the photo looks like any picture on the cover of
Maxim or Cosmo.&#0160; &#0160;(For the record, I think those are tacky as all hell.&#0160; &#0160;
I prefer the airbrush artistry of Vogue or Vanity Fair.&#0160; But that&#39;s just me.)<br />
</p>
