Are Belly Buttons The New Armpits? Photoshop Seems To Think So…
So a few months ago, I brought up the fact that armpits are the latest in a string of bodily flaws of women that needs to be airbrushed out. After the photos of Lindsay Lohan in German GQ got released, where her belly button is missing in one shot, and then is suddenly moved up to her ribcage in another, I figured it was, yes, horrifying but a hopefully a one-time thing, not a new trend. However, this weekend, I came across pictures of Jersey Shore star Jenni “J-WOWW” Farley in the latest issue of Maxim magazine – and guess what’s missing in the bikini, midsection baring shots?
I can’t help but wonder – with imperfect: bruises, blemishes, cellulite, tattoos, arms, legs, waists, butts, hips, thighs, calves, noses, wrinkles, hair, and armpits, all deemed unacceptable by the magazine photoshopper standards in their natural state – what’s next? What’s left? While pondering this question, I honestly couldn’t think of anything else that hasn’t been airbrushed at some point, on some female celebrity; image editors have “fixed” absolutely every aspect of the female form at some point. I’m beginning to wonder why take photographs at all? Why pay a celebrity, photographer, lighting, hair, make-up, and an entire crew of assistants, if the end result is never good enough. How long before we see entirely computer generated images of celebrities on the covers of magazines? Only time will tell.
By all means erase the what is visible on every human body–woman’s power to create life and nourish it through the umbilical cord.
Erase reality.
Flatten the belly’s natural swell that indicates woman’s womb, the power to create life, is erased.
Erase reality.
Then implant the sexualized breasts to be bigger than they are in reality. Still erasing reality.
Or go the other direction, same coin, opposite side, put her in a hijab or burqa.
Erase Woman. Erase reality of where we come from.
Except you can’t really erase reality any more than you can stop Nature from breaking through asphalt in the parking lot. Wake up women, from where you’ve been parked in the sidelines. Break the asphalt.
Comment by Vajra Ma — August 2, 2010 @ 12:58 pm
[...] http://feministfatale.com/2010/08/are-belly-buttons-the-new-armpits-photoshop-seems-to-think-so/ [...]
Pingback by Girl Power Articles « ShatterEverything (right now's Cinderella) — August 2, 2010 @ 10:14 pm
Vajra Ma: Beautifully stated.
Comment by Julia Tew — August 3, 2010 @ 9:21 am
I think that it is horrible that these magazines are airbrushing and digitally enhancing and removing parts of woman with programs like photoshop. But these are the things that people in our society have accustomed to see from a day to day basis and they are use to it. This is what is seen as the perfect ideal of a woman. This is what caused women to go and get reconstructive surgery done to look like them so they are as well seen as “SEXY”.
Comment by Joshua. S — October 21, 2010 @ 9:39 pm
It’s no surprise that photographers are opting for photoshop and airbrush to fix up the areas that they find error on a woman’s body. Maxim isn’t shaping up the idealism of women in women’s magazines only, they’re also targeting men’s magazine as well. Maxim, Play Boy, GQ. These magazines are telling men that women like J-woww with huge boobs is the trophy-wife, a woman’s worth. So it’s not just women that are being affected by media, but their boyfriends who read these magazines will start to degrade them as well and convince them to change alter their appearance.
Comment by Joanne S. — October 22, 2010 @ 3:00 pm
WOW, I never knew people could be so crazy. I can’t believe they do something as stupid as to airbrush something like a bellybutton. If magazines and advertisements are going to airbrush every part of the body they might as well lay off the makeup and stop being so picky with models..
Comment by Leora Sheily — April 19, 2011 @ 5:59 pm
I remember this magazine spread and I was so freaked out by her bellybutton or lack there of. I actually looked up other pictures of her to see if that’s how her bellybutton naturally looked and surprise, it didn’t.
Comment by Danielle G. — April 20, 2011 @ 8:00 pm
how could something that literally every human being has be seen as ugly and have a need to be removed. This just makes the pictures look faker than the already are. The industry really needs to take a long hard look in the mirror and reevaluate their priories.
Comment by Shawn S — June 1, 2011 @ 5:40 pm
I am very skilled in Photoshop but I can’t believe the lengths that people are going to with this tool. It is widely known that virtually all celeb photos are touched up but this is getting a little bit ridiculous. I don’t understand why there is such issue with showing the belly button. This is a very interesting article to say the least.
Comment by Rafin — July 20, 2011 @ 6:24 pm
Bellybuttons are in some sense a symbol of life. It is through the umbilical chord that one feed their child during pregnancy. To erase such an important feature on the human body is absurd. The bellybutton should in fact be a symbol of beauty.
Comment by Tiffany Majdipour — November 1, 2011 @ 12:35 pm
That is so ridiculous. The way they are changing things now, the women on covers are starting to look so far from the real thing.
Comment by Michelle A — November 2, 2011 @ 4:08 pm
The absence of the belly button only reinforces how unrealistic these images are. It seems to me that as long as a woman’s vagina and breasts are still intact, they meet mainstream cultural standards and are deemed “acceptable”.
Comment by Bridget T. — November 26, 2011 @ 11:07 pm
Thats so crazy. The picture of J-Woww with out a belly button looks so bazaar. What will be next hands? Why should we feel a shame of having a bellybutton. Everyone has one and it provides nutrition when we are in the womb. we need to move away from such a false perception of what women should look like.
Comment by Mirian M — January 20, 2012 @ 5:36 pm
I can see it now. Women going in to get their bellybuttons reduced to a smaller size. This is just too strange and I hope it was just a one time thing. I really hope people don’t start to Photoshop bellybutton and making them the “perfect” size. If this type of body altering in images escalate, the results could be damaging.
Comment by Skye G. — January 23, 2012 @ 4:55 pm
I honestly cannot think of anything else too… I have a feeling sooner or later models are just going to be used for modeling products, but never appear in photographs. It probably just won’t exist anymore because with the technology nowadays we can create bodies and faces that aren’t even real, but can be considered perfect. Watch out make-up artist’s, photographers, and entire crew of assistant’s you just might be replaced by a computer! It’s nothing new and don’t take it personally. I grew up wanting to be a celebrity or a model, but turns out that after taking this course considered being pretty actually costs more than to be happy with yourself. I’d rather be ugly and set free from this society. Thank God I’m just an average looking person. I’ve learned a whole lot just by hearing Kate Makkai. I don’t ever want to be pretty. I want to be pretty intelligent. I want to be pretty amazing. I want to be anything but just pretty.
On a different note, I know that this belly button issue was huge in Korea. Most of the Korean celebrities went under a belly button procedure just so that they can have prettier belly buttons, but even through all that work their belly buttons were still not good enough. It really sucks to know that people are trying hard to be accepted by society when they’ll actually NEVER be quite good enough.
Comment by Crystina K — January 25, 2012 @ 11:05 pm
I think companies are already creating images that are completely made up using several different people’s body parts. And even then, from one of the video’s we watched in class, it showed a photoshopper being interviewed who shared that one of their client’s had already asked to have a pieced-together-image modified some absurd amount of times, they wanted bigger eyes, the neck was too thick, not long enough, etc. It’s unbelievable. I think it was during that same video, it was revealed that Oprah had her head placed on top of some model’s body using Photoshop for Oprah’s cover shot of a magazine. It was also revealed that the advertisers did not bother getting permission to use either ones likeness from the model or Oprah. Would advertisers have the audacity to do this to a famous man? I think not.
Some thirty years ago I was given an exercise during English class in which I was asked to write about what terrified me. I wrote that in the not too distant future, life would be very much like an old cartoon called The Jetson’s. Computers & robotics would take over our everyday duties, we’d fly around in hover-mobiles instead of automobiles, and our meals would consist of pills rather than food. Scary huh? Some of these things have already come to pass! Computers have replaced so many workers’, that people’s jobs have become obsolete. Photoshop is example of a computer software program taking away the need for models, photographers, and make-up & hair stylists. What’s next?
Comment by Suzy D — January 26, 2012 @ 10:44 pm
Its crazy how you can barely see her bellybutton on that particular picture. Photographers airbrush models to enhance their beauty so you can’t see their flaws in magazines. I don’t why they have make-up artist to do the job to put on make- up on the models and then the photographers still go and Retouch pictures. It seems like their not satisfy enough to just leave their models/clients like that. Beauty retouching is popular now because its so advanced to smooth out their skin and hair also optimize body proportions.
Comment by Tiffany M — January 29, 2012 @ 3:09 pm
I think that is horrible that people use the photoshop to make a prefect body and prefect skin for the celebrities. They may make female to feel stressful after reading those magazines. It will cause more female suffer from on diet or even eating disorder.
Comment by Lam Yan Yee — January 30, 2012 @ 11:01 pm
I find it really unattractive and some-what alien looking that there is almost no belly button in the picture. It seems as if she is from outer-space, and not a real human. It is so sad how something that everyone has is now seen as an ugly mark on the body. I feel that if someone doesn’t have a belly button they are strange, not if someone has one. I think the body parts of the human body should be celebrated, not degraded.
Comment by Yasmin M — January 30, 2012 @ 11:53 pm
I heard that people doing plastic surgery for belly buttons because they want to show prettier and more sexy. I think photoshop to fixing the belly buttons are fine because some people doing surgery too. But I don’t really understand why they are doing like this and nobody cares about their belly button.
Women’s studies-10
Comment by Eun Hee Chung — February 1, 2012 @ 9:27 pm
I really don’t see why marketers feel the need to constantly airbrush things our of pictures of women. Their target audience of men would much prefer a women who looked closer to what they will be finding in the real world. And guess what, real women have belly buttons. In fact I have never heard a man look at a women and think “she’s gorgeous, if only she didn’t have that bellybutton”. It’s simply preposterous. Airbrushing out a bellybutton makes no sense to me and I am disturbed at the trend that seems to be taking over today where people have random things airbrushed out just so that they can look “better” in the eyes of a marketer. Real women have bellybuttons and I’d like it to stay that way.
Comment by Rory O — February 4, 2012 @ 3:19 pm
I believe that there’s no other sexiest part of body as bellybutton. However, I don’t know why the model’s bellybutton is removed by a photo-shop. These days, almost all of models that are presented in the media are edited by photo-shop. But was it necessary removing the bellybutton?
Comment by Youjung An — February 4, 2012 @ 8:18 pm
It is a sad thing to see that magazines airbrush everything on famous people THEY want on their cover. This means that even this girls in reality are not good enough. If I was one of them I would not accepted to be on their cover if they needed to alter my entire body. Armpits, belly buttons, etc are part of a real women body. It is horrifying to see that to them it is ugly. They are not accepting women as they are. Sooner then later the only thing thats gonna be used is someone face beauty the body will be a computer invented body.
Comment by Juliana C. — February 4, 2012 @ 10:52 pm
I thought the armpit issue was bad, then I read this afterwards. This just proves how crazy the media and these professional photographers are in creating perfection. They shouldnt even be credited for taking these photographs if they are gonna end up altering the models body. The bellybutton has some importance to some people since it was what connected them to their mother. Why cover it up?
Comment by Gabriel Y. — February 5, 2012 @ 9:30 am
My guess that our faces will soon be removed as well and be replaced with another one that isnt ours. This image just promotes to women that we should be ashamed of our belly buttons and should be eliminated. Which is completely stupid because their is nothing wrong with our bellybuttons and it isnt a flaw or mistake.
Comment by Guadalupe Y — February 5, 2012 @ 10:55 am
As someone with experience in critiquing form and figure in art…in God’s name why would you do away with the belly button? Belly buttons are beautiful!!! They balance the landscape of the human torso. To implicitly make people feel ashamed of such a natural part of the body is frankly mindblowing.
Comment by Taja Eddahbi — February 6, 2012 @ 12:11 pm
The belly button? I mean what is there left to airbrush out then? I can’t see how it would make someone look more attractive or sexy. Essentially, it seems dehumanizing and unrealistic. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t have a belly button. Hopefully, this airbrushed belly button thing doesn’t become a trend.
Comment by Jessica K — February 6, 2012 @ 12:29 pm