When do we draw the line?

When it comes to digital manipulation, it’s a topic that everyone in the world is aware of. Digital Manipulation is the act of altering the original image or media to your liking whether you’re trying to advertise a product or generally please a certain audience. This kind of practice has been going on since the 1900’s and even continues to this day. Honestly, digital manipulation isn’t a bad thing to do depending on what kind of media you’re altering. Most of the backlash you hear in the entertainment world nowadays when someones alters an image is when it’s used on a person. There are countless of occasions where celebrities do photo shoots or even when they’re having their photo or video taken of them just for them to find out later that they’re been altered by the company who took those photos. Most cases the face is altered to the point where the eyes are lifted, nose is adjusted, cheeks etc. Editors sometimes gets really out of hand and starts to alter the eye color and skin color so completely to the point where they’re basically making up a whole another person. The worst part about this is that most of the people who get a photo taken of them or even a video recorded don’t see the finish product till after it’s publish. Basically giving the person no type of input on the media.

There was one recent even where singer Meghan Trainor made a music video named ‘Me Too’ was published. Little did she know, her producers decided to Photoshop her body to the point. What they adjusted was making her waistline way smaller than her actually size which caused a huge uproar with the singer herself and her fans so much she had that version of the video removed from the internet. Ironically enough, Trainor saw the video and it was up to her to give the producers the approval to release. It was noted that she should’ve payed more attention at the time instead of being in a rush to publish it. The aspect to note here is that she wasn’t okay with the product released and had it removed which is something that most celebrities tend to not do nor do you not hear about their views of what they think about it. It’s steps like these that people need to start taking to let people know it’s not ok to                                                                          alter and image of someone’s body to fit the american standard that people deem it to be.

Not all forms of digital media that’s manipulated isn’t all that bad. Some practices can offer humor and very innovative pieces that can turn out to be a beautiful work of art. Most of these practices consist of comics, jokes that people made, the environment and can even be people who gets their photo taken of them. Now i know i just went on a rant how photographers and people who video edit are in the wrong when it comes to manipulating people for their own desires. However there are some companies or people who actually do it the right way. Which consists of not altering the body but just enhancing the color quality of the image to make the colors more vibrant or make some color corrections that the camera used that day may have caused. The same practice goes for editing a pictures taken of a scenery that may have caught your eye in which you decided to make it more visually interesting instead of drawn out colors. In most cases you can’t really manipulate an                                                                           image to that caliber because then people would start to believe that it’s a made up image.

In the end it’s up to the producers, the community and ultimately the celebrities to put a end to digital manipulation. It’s not right for the media to keep deceiving people into believing what’s real and what’s made up. It’s getting pretty ridiculous how much “editing” people are doing to just normal everyday people and even celebrities. Like i mentioned before not all forms of manipulation are bad, just the ones that makes it seem like someone just got a face or body job just for a particular event.