It Finally Exists: A Women’s Magazine With No Photoshop!
Verily Magazine’s no photoshop policy proves the power of authentic beauty.
It is no secret that the majority of the fashion industry utilizes extensive photoshop techniques in their advertising and magazines. Although you can look at almost any picture in a magazine and see how much editing has been done, a perfect example of how far things are taken can be seen in Dove’s Raw Beauty campaign which you can see below. Verily magazine has taken on the big task of creating a magazine aimed at women that doesn’t feature the narrow view of women that most fashion and lifestyle magazines deliver. Often times the portrayal of women seen in magazines can have a negative impact on readers as the images do not reflect the true features of women and beg to create the so-called “ideal appearance.” Most images feature loads of makeup, air brushing and photoshop that turns natural beauty into something that could never be achieved without such manipulation. This makes many women who read these magazines feel bad about themselves and get them wishing they could change aspects of their appearance to match what is being sold as “ideal.” Verily’s mandate around the subject states: “Whereas other magazines artificially alter images in Photoshop to achieve the so-called ideal body type or leave a maximum of three wrinkles, Verily never alters the body or face structure of the Verily models.” As stated by the co-founders of Verily Magazine Kara Eschbach and Janet Sahm, “the unique features of women, whether crows feet, freckles, or a less-than-rock-hard body, are aspects that contribute to women’s beauty and should be celebrated — not shamed, changed or removed.” This is an awesome step forward for the industry as it will begin to encourage a new trend and likely help to remove much of the circulating ideas about what an ideal woman should look like. For models, instead of looking for the current narrow view of what a model should be, this celebration of beauty can help expand the range of model selection to include everyone. What is better than using real people to model lifestyle designed for real people? Below are some images from Verily’s spread called “Runway To Realway.” The magazine held a model call using social media whereby women could be nominated by their friends, spouses or even themselves to be featured in the story.
The models you see below aren’t “models” at all but rather a publicist, a writer, an advertising assistant and a sales associate, respectively. I personally feel this is an awesome initiative to take as the perception of beauty and “good looks” that has been created in our society is rather warped. It could be said that we have also become somewhat enslaved by many of the ideas of beauty.
The initial judgement we cast on others based on their appearance, as it passes through our “looks filter,” can create an entirely different perception of a person before we even get to know them. An honest question to ask ourselves, how many men or women have we not had interest in talking to or getting to know due to our perception of how they look? Being someone who grew up always being attracted to and having a love for natural beauty, I truly hope this encourages more people to be who they are and begin kicking the habits of appearance manipulation. Check out http://verilymag.com to see their magazine. .
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