Bad naughty head.

So, for the second Friday in a row I have been incapacitated for the entire damn day thanks to a raging headache. (Headaches which confer dizziness and nausea == Meredith does not drive today.) Last week I woke up with Migraine Sign, so between that and semanticsmc breaking his elbow, I didn't go down to Kansas City to see my relatives after all. This week I thought at first it was sinuses (fearing that I'd picked up whatever my co-worker had when I brought him Drixoral and miso soup, in that grand tradition of No Good Deed Goes Unpunished). But a hot shower and Advil only confirmed that, no, sinus congestion was not an issue, and spending most of the day waiting for the Advil to kick in confirmed that it was resolutely not kicking. Then semanticsmc got home and proffered Excedrin. An hour later, no headache.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I wasted an entire day thanks to not realising that it's been about three days since I had any caffeine. Somewhere, madandrew and deifire are laughing at me.

On Photographing Badly

It has now been demonstrated to me that everyone, and I do mean everyone, photographs badly. Or at least that nobody photographs like what one sees in advertisements. I had had this explained to me before, and had even seen a few examples of retouching, but those were predominantly face jobs which smoothed out oversized pores or blotchiness. However, then cristalia posted a link to Glenn Feron's retouching site, and all I can say is OMFG.

Here are ten things I did not realise that models actually had:

1. Elbows. Apparently elbows are unsightly and must be retouched out. (Smoothing out the wrinkling of the skin caused by the extreme angle she's bent at was clearly also a goal, but damn, if her skin were naturally that tight in that position, she'd rupture the instant she stood up. I wonder now how many girls pose in positions like that and despair of having terminal back fat, not realising that skin does that because it's a solid and has to go somewhere when compressed.)

2. Knees. Note how her foot has been kipped up (down?) at an angle which suggests her ankle is broken in order to cover up the dimpling caused by the fact that she actually has a kneecap. Note also the 50% larger ass. The extra bit of bling on the earrings is also kinda stupid.

3. Underarms. Again with the covering up a perfectly normal joint. What do these people have against joints? I am also saddened by the fact that her cheekbones are gone. Cheekbones are sexy. Turning her eyes into glass is also off-putting.

4. Back fat. And she doesn't even have that much of it; it's a relatively normal back, and they've hacked off about a quarter of it and put it all in her ass. Strangely, it has all gone to the right cheek and none to the left; if a real person had an ass that looked like that at that angle, it would look completely deformed when they stood up. Note also the elbow job.

5. Hair that doesn't always behave. #3 had a bit of this too, but the addition of a lightening job makes this one more annoying in my sight. The Farrah Fawcett wisps are kinda cute as they are, but no. She's also had glass eyes put in, and her chin and cheekbones are gone. They've added some bulk to the creepily hollow cheeks, which gets a thumbs-up from me, but that smile looks unnatural without smile lines. Skin has folds, people. Live with it.

6. Hairlines. And asymmetric skulls. Her nose has also been made slimmer and the lines around her mouth edited out, which makes the darker lips look pasted on. On the other hand, they made her skin darker, which I wouldn't have expected.

7. Cellulite. And they're still pretty. Girls, do not let anyone give you shit over cellulite ever again. I have to admit, though, that my favourite thing about this picture is the way the table and the girls are rotated, but the reflection stays in place, leaving the reflected girl's head about six inches lower in the mirror than it really ought to be.

8. Tummies. She has a tummy! It sticks out past her ribcage, even with her back arched like that, so she must have one when she's standing in a neutral posture. And she has back fat! And knees! And painfully fake boobs, but hey, we can't win 'em all.

9. Moles. Also lines on her neck and wrist, a hairline, enough ass fat to be noticeable in those undies, and I think her arms are kinda freckly too. Plus, I dunno, you think maybe she wanted that breast covered up? This is almost as much of a completely fake addition as #2's ass.

10. Knuckles and metacarpal bones. This one's probably up there with cheekbones in the List of Things I Should Have Realised Were Being Edited Out, but comes as a surprise anyway. What does it say about us as a culture that our idealised women have no stomachs but fat hands? I have a high BMI but obviously bony hands; the only people I know who have no visible carpal/metacarpal bone structure are dangerously overweight in the medical sense, and even they still have knuckles. Note also the hairline, folds of skin near her breasts, and now-you-see-it-now-you-don't thigh muscles.

And that's just the first eleven pictures, kids. (I skipped #10 because there wasn't anything there I hadn't already pointed out.)

It's interesting: after poring through these photos, the retouched versions now look painfully obvious to me -- they have a cartoony quality not unlike the even more horribly creepy retouched-children photos that showed up on BoingBoing a while back. So I also have to wonder what it says about us as a culture that we're willing to accept the idea that even though the cartooniness is visible, even though it can be demonstrated that no human being actually looks like this, that these pictures are still supposed to represent some kind of ideal to us.