Profile for College Candy

Scanning through magazines is always a really nice way to reduce my over-inflated ego. Typically there are pictures on pictures of beautiful, svelte women and I sit there like “Well…I guess I could start a diet” as I shove another Oreo into my face because YOLO. I mean it’s obvious that all of the pictures have been highly edited to sell whatever product they happen to be advertising, but edited pictures still don’t make a girl feel great. Recently, however, Victoria’s Secret has come under some media scrutiny for heavily manipulating their pictures. Right? Like, they really need to edit those girls – they already look like Barbie dolls. But they do use Photoshop, and a they use it a lot. Erin Heatherton, Victoria’s Secret Model, thinks there’s nothing wrong with adding heavy Photoshop effects to pictures. She thinks it’s about adding “fantasy” to the image.

I was surprised, I guess, to find someone so readily willing to accept that their picture had been drastically altered. I feel like if I were a celebrity and was so excited to pose for like Rolling Stone or Cosmo or something and then saw a picture that was clearly edited, I would feel like I wasn’t good enough. I mean Erin the Victoria’s Secret model is gorgeous, right? Is it really necessary to make her skin tanner, her cleavage more prominent, her abs more defined? How close to perfect are we trying to make these people? Read more…