Idolizing Retouches: Kim Kardashian's Cellulite Debacle

Here's what bothers me. For decades, we have all been looking through magazines (men and women alike) and seeing these almost perfect women with their tanned and toned bodies, thinking, "Yes! That's what a woman should look like!" Girls and women take those pictures and then try to look like them. When they don't, even after dieting and exercise, they feel defeated and ugly. Their body might look hot, but what about these pimples? Or these freckles? Everything might be amazing, except that little bit of cellulite on their legs, and it tortures them. It tortures US!

Men constantly compare women to these photos, whether they realize it or not. These models and celebrities have set the bar against which we are all judged from then on. Proportions are all decided on by pictures in a magazine. And when we fail to meet this incredible ideal, we may not be thrown to the side, but you can bet that inside his head, your boyfriend is wishing your body was a bit more like that model he saw in Maxim.

I try not to think about it too much. I still look in a magazine (Bridal mags these days), and feel like shit compared to the beauty of these women, but I try to put it in perspective and be happy with my life and my figure. Then I see something like this. Comment magazine was doing a feature article on Kim Kardashian, the famous socialite with curves. On accident, they released her "UNTOUCHED" photos first, then recalled them and replaced them with the official photos. Just look at the difference.
The real Kim is darker in skin tone, has a splotchier complexion, thicker waist, more of a bulge beside her breast, and much bigger legs with ... the dreaded cellulite. Her hair has even been retouched on her forehead to look smoother. Her outfit has been retouched to look better. Shine has been added in certain places and taken out in others to accentuate her skin tone and her curves. THIS is our ideal of beauty? The one on the left, I would applaud. She's real! But the one on the right is completely unattainable. Here's dead proof. It takes computer software like photoshop to make her look that good.

Basically, most men and women are holding up an ideal that is computer generated and completely impossible in reality. And that sad part is that even though we know now, and have for years, that photos are often retouched, we still look in the magazines and wish we could look like that. Who is it that decides Kim on the left is not beautiful enough? Who decides what are "flaws" and what aren't? We do, I guess. After all, we're the ones buying the magazines right? Then rushing out to buy the products we think will replicate the look? Something to think about.