***************Making an Impact Danyel Smith

So coming on here today and seeing this as my last blog, (only before it's graded by my peers) I got kinda sad in a way, feeling like I hadn't made the impact that I wanted to. I felt that my cause was way too out there for this day an age, but at the same time felt that it was such an easy thing to ask for.
I find myself looking more at the magazines while standing in line at the grocery store and wondering how my peers and I would react to a magazine cover with a normal looking person on the cover or in an advertisement. Would I be more inclined to buy it because of its reality or would I inadvertently look past it because they weren't necessarily the "perfect" looking ones?
After this thought I then got upset on our jaded perception of what "perfect" is. This embedded image of perfection is what needs to be changed and I think the place to start with this is in our media....Magazines! I think a huge person responsible is the editor and chief of these publications. This is why I chose Vibe Magazine's Chief Editor Danyel Smith. Vibe is a very successful magazine that is looked up to by the others.
It starts there, with a brave individual who cares about the effects this has on women! Smith is that person and these fake individuals we look at every day need to be the unaltered individuals they started as. Photo retouching needs to be minimized and form there I think so much can change. The retouching of our lives will be minimized as well and all in all our world and our minds will become a healthier place!

Aha! Skinny Models Don't Sell More Products

-original article-

"Skinny Here's a study that's likely to get a lot of media attention (especially if female editors of a certain age have anything to say about it).

Research conducted at the University of Queensland indicates that ads featuring super-skinny models are no more effective at making women want to buy a product than similar ads featuring a healthy looking model.

Researcher Philippa Dietrichs (you go, girl!) created three ads for products targeted to women: lingerie, shampoo and a dress. Each ad was produced twice: once showing a photo of a healthy looking young woman and once showing the kind of skinny model who makes Kate Moss look like a bodybuilder.

Both sets of ads were then shown to 400 young women. Respondents showed no difference in their likelihood to buy the products. However, women 18 to 25 reported feeling better about themselves after viewing the ad with the healthier looking model.

Says Diedrichs, "Often people make the argument that thinness sells, and that's why they use slim models.

"But we can change the images we see and still sell products but also make people feel better about themselves."

OK, so maybe the science behind this study is a little shaky, since 400 women isn't a huge sample, and consumer intentions and self-image are hard to quantify. Still, the next time a client or casting agent suggests using a teenager who looks like she subsists on diet Coke and Trident, why not mention that famous Queensland study? "

Posted by Holly Hughes in Fashion on November 17, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) AddThis Social Bookmark Button

WE CAN ONLY HOPE THAT THIS IS THE CASE!

Naked Models

Miss Smith is up to it again.

CAN WE PUT SOME CLOTHES ON THESE COVER GIRLS?!!

*********My own addiction

So I was working on a project we have due in class where we have to put together a whole advertising campaign for a client. In this process I have had to create a fake website using photoshop and put together different advertisements, etc.

I have become really good with the program and have found it to be addicting. I have started putting different photos in there to see what I can do for pictures of myself and friends.
"Let me just black and white this one so you can't see that blemish."
"Ooh a distortion brush...let me just make that smaller... and that a little bigger..now my ass looks great!"

I stopped myself last night in the process and gave myself a little slap on the wrist. There are endless possibilities with this program and I can make myself into an entirely different person. But how embarrassing is that if I were to put up a retouched photo in my default and people are like "Who the Fuck is that? She doesn't look like that." That's how the models must feel!

So I now see that this is an addiction and I'm going to need a stronger drug to over power the damage already done!

*******How far will you allow Digital Retouching to go?

Digital retouching is something that I am trying to take a stand against. While looking through blogs I found that people still do not understand how bad this can be for how women view themselves. As a woman, I had not even thought about what men were thinking, but I am sure it is probably just as much or maybe even worse than us.

Should retouching to the extent that it is now be allowed by magazines? Am I the only one who sees the severity of the way our society is heading?

Kate Winslet: Vanity Fair

There has been some recent controversy with the December issue of Vanity Fair. Kate Winslet who is on the cover and has a spread within the magazine is looking better than ever!

There has been rumors going around that she has been retouched and there is no way that she could look like this. Kate has been stated to be furious at these allegations. With the Oscar winning star of Titanic being seen as over weight during that time she now thinks that "Once a fat kid, always a fat kid."

I am sure that these photos have been retouched to a degree, but this can be seen as a good thing. I am kind of on the fence about my feelings. First I was angry that a woman was always going to be questioned and thought to not look like they do or get recognition if they were naturally beautiful. But then I started thinking isn't it good that more people are understanding that things are being airbrushed excessively and are not reality! I think the good is out weighing the bad here!

*******Retouching/ Revamped/ Reworked...

..what ever the hell you want to call it.

Found this program while looking up the controversy about the new Kate Winslet Vanity Fair issue and the thoughts about her retouchings.

Oh please, what good advertising. This is just spreading the love of us altering ourselves to what none of us will EVER look like.

Sorry to break it to ya girls but we have pours on our face. When we turn our head surprisingly enough we get wrinkles in our neck as well. And don't want to break any dreams or anything, but no one's eyes are as painstakingly blue or green as they make them out to be in every advertisement out there!

Please look at this! Photoshop Retouching

Principles at VIBE?

Found this interview with again Editor-in-Chief, Danyel Smith!

The subheading:

Vibe's new editor on managing morale after a popular editor is ousted

Thought that would be interesting.

My favorite part

"How would you describe your sensibility as an editor?

I'm tough. I have really high expectations. I love Vibe. I breathe it. I had some great teachers like Joe Levy and Robert Christgau along the way — they were very principled, tough, editor — just because [the subject matter] is music and culture doesn't mean it's any less important to be that way."

So you're saying it's important to be principled with your magazine and uphold morale?!

So how about looking at the statistics of what your leading magazine is contributing to the body image of people everywhere!

Thanks Smith

**********VIBE vs. Robin Thicke

In a blog posted in September there was some interesting news about VIBE and their lack of a choice for their magazine cover.

Robin Thicke was denied the honor to be put on their cover for reasons based on his ethnicity?

Woah there Smith!


Thicke commented:
“When I did a recent interview with Vibe magazine I asked, “Why can’t I get the cover? This is a magazine I love. If there’s one magazine that I’d want to be on the cover of, it’s Vibe.” Their response was they don’t have white artists on the cover; that the only white artist they’ve had on the cover was Eminem. I guess if that’s what it is, it is what it is. And I respect that because I live in a house with a black woman.”

They want to stay true to their African American based audience, but Eminem and Mariah Carey have both been on their covers. Thicke was also

Danyel Smith responded:
“We have a great deal of respect for Robin Thicke and his music, and we remain flattered by his desire to be on a VIBE cover. A VIBE cover is a huge milestone in any artist’s career—recent cover stars include Young Jeezy, Mariah Carey, 50 Cent, Usher, Senator Barack Obama, Eminem, Lil Wayne, and Robert De Niro, to say nothing of our 15-year history. We wish Thicke the best, and we’re glad he discusses his thoughts on race and R&B in the new October 2008 issue of VIBE.”

Ciara was then given the cover instead

Grow up VIBE!
I guess there's more issues then I expected over there...

Star Magazine...Lay off

I have a problem with Star Magazine as well! I get sucked into reading this crap, but why has out culture become so obsessed with the lives of other people (highlighting usually something horrible that’s happened to them).

Star does things in an opposite respect to VIBE where they highlight and maybe even emphasize the flaws of those in the public spotlight. No wonder we're afraid to show our true selves....we'll get criticized and torn apart because that's what we're used to doing in the magazines.
"Her legs are too big"
"She has a funny shaped nose"
"Wow, she's white and pale"

I am trying to get the real people seen, but not put the highlight on their flaws! Give everyone a break……People are not flawless and guess what, that’s what makes us interesting and not BORING!

Star Magazine...Lay off!

*******VIBE can be a leader for change?

VIBE is not the only magazine out there that represents body image in a bad light.

Stores are swamped with tons of publications that some of us see every day: Cosmo, In Touch, People, Glamour, etc.

VIBE Magazine is one of THE worst though!!!!!!

Editor-in-Chief of VIBE Magazine, Danyel Smith has written for many publications and is seen as a pop culture expert on VH1 where she is regularly listened to as a commentator. She is an educated woman with a master of fine arts in creative writing from the New School University.

Something NEEDS to happen and I cannot constantly be looking at Skinny Bitches that keep getting skinnier and skinnier.

At the rate we're going at, 5 years from now the female body is going to be made to be the size of a pole in media advertisements. What is it going to take to get something to change with all of this? Enough people have already been hospitalized for their poor living habits in trying to become this "unattainable image."



There needs to be a new protocol and rules put out there for the magazines that instill the altering of a body image in their publications! Once the altering is taken away from the print...the altering will be taken out of people.

It starts with YOU Danyel Smith. You are one of the most influential editors in the business and are better than what you are putting out there.

Define:

Noun 1. editor in chief - a person responsible for the editorial aspects of publication; the person who determines the final content of a text (especially of a newspaper or magazine)

The Editor-in-Chief has the power to change what is being viewed.

SO START DOING SOMETHING ABOUT IT!

Does it really effect us?

The National Institute on Media and the Family

This page shows some interesting facts on the effects of Media on girls body image.


- In a survey of girls 9 and 10 years old, 40% have tried to lose weight, according to an ongoing study funded by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (USA Today, 1996).

- One author reports that at age thirteen, 53% of American girls are "unhappy with their bodies." This grows to 78% by the time girls reach seventeen (Brumberg, 1997).

- In a study among undergraduates media consumption was positively associated with a strive for thinness among men and body dissatisfaction among women (Harrison & Cantor, 1997).

- Teen-age girls who viewed commercials depicting women who modeled the unrealistically thin-ideal type of beauty caused adolescent girls to feel less confident, more angry and more dissatisfied with their weight and appearance (Hargreaves, 2002).

- In another recent study on media's impact on adolescent body dissatisfaction, two researchers found that:

* Reading magazines for teen girls or women also correlated with body dissatisfaction for girls.


The Media Awareness Network

Here is another place that shows what the effects of body image can have on us!

"We don’t need Afghan-style burquas to disappear as women. We disappear in reverse—by revamping and revealing our bodies to meet externally imposed visions of female beauty."

Source: Robin Gerber, author and motivational speaker

"....advertising rules the marketplace and in advertising thin is "in." Twenty years ago, the average model weighed 8 per cent less than the average woman—but today’s models weigh 23 per cent less. Advertisers believe that thin models sell products. When the Australian magazine New Woman recently included a picture of a heavy-set model on its cover, it received a truckload of letters from grateful readers praising the move. But its advertisers complained and the magazine returned to featuring bone-thin models. Advertising Age International concluded that the incident "made clear the influence wielded by advertisers who remain convinced that only thin models spur the sales of beauty products."

Evil Photoshop

This video kills me how easy it is just to change the appearance of someone so easily.

I know this is a popular video, but it shows the truths of this unattainable image I talked about!

How are we supposed to look at billboards, magazines, commercials, etc and think that this is how we're supposed to look...but it's not even feasible?

We may think we know better, but what about kids these days that don't know any better?

********Danyel Smith..thought she had more integrity!

In December of 2007 Smith did an interview with Pink News.

They featured her as one "Hip Editor." Asking her questions about her love for rap music through the good and the bad.

In one section she talks about women and their place in the rapper world...

PINK: Why are there so few women rappers?
D.S.: You have to be so tough and so strong to make it in this biz. It's just way more difficult to be a female rapper than a male rapper. Women are often pressured to change their style and lyrics and to wear more revealing clothes. I've seen so many women broken down by this business. They expect to be treated decently and be appreciated for who they are, to be able to say the things they feel. Only rarely [like with Lauryn Hill, Queen Latifah and Salt-N-Pepa] does that happen. I'm dreaming of the next female great. I want her so bad I can touch her. I think men want that too – a smart, strong, confident, talented woman who is powerful. But where is she?

Wow....
"They expect to be treated decently and be appreciated for who they are"

"Women are often pressured to change their style and lyrics and to wear more revealing clothes."

Funny you say that Smith......maybe you should try taking a step and clothing the women in your magazine and making them appear for how they truly are, instead of all this airbrushing shit!

********Back and forth with Smith and Ciara

It was said by Editor-in-Chief Danyel Smith said that Ciara agreed to these images and indeed posed in the nude.

Ciara claims that she had underwear on and they were airbrushed away.

Smith then replied in a radio interview with New York's KISS-FM radio "Almost any photo you see on the cover of Vibe or any magazine is airbrushed [to some degree]."
(MTV Article)

Good to know Smith.

I found more images that are in the magazine and it is sickening that these are even allowed to be shown and are even thought to be tasteful. Whether or not they were approved by Ciara, they were approved by Smith.

The photoshopping in them alone is absurd and how is it even helping how women should be viewed. We want the respect from the world, something that Danyel Smith I thought understood. Instead we show the readers of VIBE this is how we want you to view women.

VIBE VIXEN alone reaches 4.5 million women, that’s not even counting the men.

Thanks Smith..guess I better hit the gym!

********VIBE

The VIBE Media Group, started in 1993 by Quincy Jones, is the publishers of the award winning VIBE magazine. They are an “urban and music culture” based magazine known for their attractive talented artists featured on their magazine covers.

This media group is also responsible for VIBE VIXEN, VIBE.com, Comcast’s Video-on-Demand channel, the VIBE Awards and last but not least their wireless content service mVibe.

Their prized Editor-in-Chief is Danyel Smith. She has been with VIBE since its beginnings in 1993. She began as their music editor and in 1996 after receiving a National Arts Journalism Program fellowship, was selected as their Editor-in-Chief for VIBE, VIBE VIXEN and the website. She left in 1999 only to return back in 2006 where she remains to this day.

Recently VIBE magazine has been in the spotlight for some recent happenings with an artist on their cover!
Ciara is the featured artist for VIBE’s October 2008 cover. There was controversy when it was said that the pictures were not approved by Ciara and she appeared to be made looking nude with photoshop.

Thoughts?

******The start of my journey...

We have a problem with body image in our society and how it has objectified women. I feel that these “skinny bitches” we always see are stemmed from our media and are unattainable by the average human being. Growing up as a dancer in front of mirrors all the time, I always struggled with my own body issues and what was seen as “needed” for a dancer’s body. It didn’t help seeing all the models on the front of magazines and watching it get progressively worse over the years. Not only has it become an image to strive for in models, but also for celebrities; not only for grown women, but for girls as young as 5 years old.

When my friends and I were 5 years old, that was the last thing on our minds. The other day the little 6 year old I nanny for turned to me and asked if she looked fat in what she was wearing. That was the last straw. I know that this is an issue addressed by many already, but I could not sit back and just watch young girls and grown women strive for an image given to us by our media that is not even attainable and not do anything at all!

We are all beautiful human beings because we are all so different. Why do we let the media control how we look? Because in reality that is what they are doing without us even realizing! This is something that needs to be fixed and through this blog I hope I can find others who feel the same way!