Why Photoshop is Making Us All Messed Up

The increasing scrutiny and awareness about the use of Photoshop in depicting girls and women, particularly tween and teen girls, brings to the surface an undeniable dichotomy that is making a real mess of us:

Altered images of girls and women (and men, too) depicting bodies shapes that are unattainable and unhealthy used to sell everything from bikinis to lipgloss, juxtaposed against the historic trend that has shifted the American diet toward highly processed foods with high sugar, fat and salt content.

The result – pictures of skinny young women made even skinnier with Photoshop, presented to an increasingly overweight and under-exercised population.

A video showing the transforming effect airbrushing has on a picture of a young blonde woman illustrates how this process works. (Interestingly, when I saw the video today on YouTube, the commercial preceding the video was for Jergens BB Body Perfecting Body Cream that, among other things, firms and "corrects" imperfections.)

If you haven't seen the video yet, watch it. It's illuminating and instructive – images of teen girls and women in advertisements and magazines covers are simply not real. They are false depictions and can be rejected as the standard to which girls and women aspire.

Of course, this video and the recent Target Photoshop story will not change what is real—that images and messages of "perfection" coupled with unsustainable diets, lifestyles and stress levels are pulling people, especially our young, in two contradictory directions.

These two diverging realities, however, may be inching a little closer together, for the benefit of everyone.

On February 27, the FDA proposed updates to nutrition labels on food packages that would highlight calories, serving sizes and added sugars. This will create better, faster access to information about food, helping families make better dietary choices.

The question remains, how to counteract the latent negative messaging in these images? Answer: Offer your own messages.

One thing we've learned from the Target Photoshop story is the pursuit of "perfection" comes at a cost. It certainly has cost Target (and Target has paid more because of proximity to the data breach).

But the cost is most grave for girls and women (and men, too) who struggle physically, mentally and emotionally with making sense of these opposing messages.