In different eras of human history, there were different standards of beauty, both female and male. It is enough to look at ancient statues, ceremonial portraits of the Middle Ages or paintings by the great masters of the Renaissance to understand how radically these very standards have changed. But what can we say – even in the 20th century alone, at least four approaches to what is beautiful and what could, for instance, be retouched, have changed.
Around the end of the nineties, Photoshop firmly entered our lives, and real life finally diverged from what we see on the pages of fashion magazines. Yes, in recent years the world has been steadily moving towards the perception of human appearance as it is, without numerous filters and many hours of retouching, but photographers still continue to turn models into similarities of glossy icons according to approximately the same “standard”.
Bored Panda has already told about the art project ‘Goddess Women’, the founder of which takes photographs of famous women of our time – and applies to them the same filters that many social media influencers love so much. As of today, the project’s Instagram page can boast over 374K followers, including world stars such as Gigi Hadid or Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, as well as more than 2.6K publications.
From this abundance of photos, Bored Panda carefully selected the most popular ones, so please feel free to scroll to the very end of this list and observe how world-known women could look with all those numerous filters on them. And if the photos we have chosen are not enough for you, then here is the first, second and even third parts of our collection.
More info: Instagram
#1 Emma Watson
#2 Julia Roberts
#3 Rachel Mcadams
We must say that the opinions of people in the comments to the publications are radically different. Some are simply delighted with the retoucher’s really outstanding work, and some simply do not understand why all these filters should be applied to already beautiful people. “LOL she’s already beautiful without the facetune,” writes, for example, one of the commenters to the photo where the actress Alexandra Daddario is depicted.
#4 Jennifer Lawrence
#5 Sandra Bullock
#6 Britney Spears
“As a professional, I can judge these shots from two quite different angles,” says Dmitry Kravtsov, a Ukrainian photographer who was asked by Bored Panda to comment on these works. “On the one hand, the excellent work of the retoucher is really visible. Almost flawless, you can’t say anything. On the other hand, over the years of working with Photoshop and Lightroom, certain ‘standards’ for retouching the skin, eyes, lips and etc have been developed – and thus a kind of unification is obtained.”
“Just look, let’s say, at one of the photos of Gal Gadot exposed here – commenters are trying to guess who it is, and only a third of people name her correctly. That is, we are faced with a problem when, in an effort to emphasize their individuality, people in fact achieve the exact opposite – they become damn similar to each other. I’m not sure if that’s what we really wanted.”
#7 Margot Robbie
#8 Rihanna
#9 Nina Dobrev
According to statistics provided by Consumer Reports, around 1 out of 5 Americans (21 percent) who has ever had any social media account has used a beauty filter before posting pictures on social media. Among these, 9 percent said they “always or nearly always” use them and 13 percent said they “often” use them.
At the same time, 47 percent of those who regularly retouch their photos are in the age group from 18 to 29 years, and 33 percent – from 30 to 44 years. In other words, these are practically all generations of modern Americans, starting with Gen Z. At the same time, many of the respondents understand that there is a certain problem here.
“They seem to recreate the same problem that fashion magazines perpetuated in the ’80s and ’90s – literally unobtainable beauty standards – but on a more insidious microscale,” one person that took part in the survey admits. They do understand, but continue doing so simply because almost everyone does it.
#10 Elle Fanning
#11 Megan Fox
#12 Lana Del Rey
