Pho­to­shop and Low Self Esteem in Girls

What is low self esteem? I saw a fas­ci­nat­ing story on NBC Nightly News that struck at the heart of this ques­tion. It’s a modern-​day story of David and Goliath. Except in this case, David is a 14 year old girl named Julia Bluhm. Sev­en­teen Mag­a­zine fills the role of Goliath. At least, that’s the head­line story. The part that got my atten­tion was the role Pho­to­shop plays in this con­test — sort of act­ing as a sol­dier for Goliath.

Please take a look at the news story.

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Does Pho­to­shop Hurt Young Women?

Unless you live under a rock, you’ve heard women com­ment that it’s impos­si­ble to look like the mod­els in mag­a­zines. It’s com­mon knowl­edge. Peo­ple who have never actu­ally seen Pho­to­shop are aware of it and that it’s used to enhance every pho­to­graph pub­lished in mag­a­zines about fash­ion, glam­our or style. It hap­pens to men and women alike.

Despite this con­scious knowl­edge that Pho­to­shop exists and how it’s applied, there’s still an emo­tional ele­ment that hits young girls very hard. As you see in the story, many girls feel like they aren’t “good enough” com­pared to the images they see in mag­a­zines. They’ve set them­selves up to achieve an impos­si­ble stan­dard. When they try and fail, it hurts. For some, it leads to dam­ag­ing behav­ior as they con­tinue try­ing to reach the impos­si­ble result set forth by magazines.

Julia Bluhm rec­og­nized the prob­lem among her friends and did some­thing about it. Among other things, she cre­ated a peti­tion on Change​.org to Give Girls Images of Real Girls. It struck a chord with oth­ers. So far, she’s reached nearly 85,000 peo­ple who signed her peti­tion to the Editor-​in-​Chief of Sev­en­teen Mag­a­zine. More than that, she sparked a litany of responses on blogs and video sites like YouTube. Ulti­mately, Sev­en­teen responded to agree that one photo spread out of each issue will show “real girls.”

Work­ing for Goliath

I love a good “David and Goliath” story as much as any­one, but the other rea­son this caught my atten­tion so much is that I’ve been work­ing for Goliath. After all, I use Pho­to­shop and other soft­ware to retouch images. That was the topic for my post just yes­ter­day — por­trait retouch­ing soft­ware. One of the com­ments in the news story really grabbed me. It was from a video of a young girl who claimed, “Pho­to­shop is harm­ful on so many lev­els.”

That hit me pretty hard. I use Pho­to­shop. My friends use Pho­to­shop. I fol­low Scott Kelby — the Pho­to­shop Insider. I even go to Pho­to­shop World! Have I done some­thing to cause low self esteem in oth­ers? Where is the line and when do we cross it?

Once I started think­ing in those terms, I already knew I was over the line. A con­ver­sa­tion with a pho­tog­ra­pher friend came to mind when I showed him a photo of a model that we both pho­tographed. He said, “Wow! I wish that was the model who showed up.” That’s not an uncom­mon reac­tion. When a model shows up for a shoot, she usu­ally looks like every other girl next door. While we setup our lights and gear, she’s get­ting changed with hair and makeup. You see, the trans­for­ma­tion hap­pens both before and after the pho­tog­ra­phy. Do we cross the line when apply­ing con­cealer, foun­da­tion, eye liner, or blush? Are hair curlers also a sol­dier for Goliath? Has any­one peti­tioned Clin­ique? Prob­a­bly not.

What is Low Self Esteem?

In order for me to fig­ure out what role I play in this prob­lem, I kept com­ing back to this ques­tion. What is low self esteem? Accord­ing to one def­i­n­i­tion, self esteem is a term used in psy­chol­ogy to reflect a person’s over­all eval­u­a­tion or appraisal of his or her own worth. In other words, does some­one feel bad about their self image when they look at one of my portraits?

Maybe I should just stuck with travel photos.

Do other cities feel bad when they look at a travel photo by Trey Rat­cliff, like his photo of Times Square above? I’ve been to Times Square. It doesn’t look that good in per­son. Trey’s photo cap­tures the energy of the place. It’s vibrant and alive! Yet, it’s also unreal. He used Pho­to­shop to con­vey an artis­tic sense of inter­pre­ta­tion. Is that so dif­fer­ent from retouch­ing a model?

Do ani­mals feel bad when they look at a totem paint­ing by Patrick LaM­on­tagne? Every detail of this Rock­hop­per pen­guin is per­fect, right down to the light­ing on its eye. I’ve seen real pen­guins up close. They don’t look this good. When I took a pic­ture of a pen­guin, it was bent over sniff­ing its butt. That’s real, but I wouldn’t hang it on my wall. Patrick works with Pho­to­shop to cre­ate dig­i­tal paint­ings of his sub­jects. From peo­ple to pen­guins, he shows them in per­fect and exquis­ite detail. Isn’t that what painters have done for cen­turies? Should we expect an artist to include pim­ples or other imper­fec­tions on their sub­jects? If not, the why do we expect pho­tog­ra­phers to leave their pho­tos untouched?

It’s much more likely that other pho­tog­ra­phers and artists feel bad when they com­pare their images to the works of these two great artists. Con­versely, I know many peo­ple who find their works inspir­ing. It makes us want to learn more, try harder, and reach some­thing that is beyond our grasp today.

Then I thought about this ques­tion from another aspect of my life. What is low self esteem? It’s what hap­pens when you believe that some­one else’s best mat­ters more than your best. I’m a per­son who has gone up and down with weight through the course of my life. I used to feel bad about my self image and, some­times, I still do.

A cou­ple of years ago, I learned some­thing that I never knew. My heart just doesn’t pump as strong as the aver­age heart. When I exert myself, it can’t pump out enough blood with enough pres­sure to sat­isfy the demand, so it has to pump faster. In other words, my heart races very quickly as I do most car­dio exer­cise. When I played foot­ball, I couldn’t run with the oth­ers, but I could tackle. In the gym, I can eas­ily lift weights, but most car­dio classes will kick my butt. That’s just the way I’m built.

I accepted my lim­i­ta­tions before I truly under­stood them. That’s because of a won­der­ful trainer who shared a sim­ple wis­dom with me. Every­one is dif­fer­ent. You can’t be what some­one else is, but you can be the best that you are. Most ath­letes I know aren’t com­pet­ing with oth­ers. They’re com­pet­ing with their own per­for­mance. It’s that kind of men­tal state helps their own self esteem.

That’s why I can watch the Olympics this sum­mer with­out feel­ing bad when I see peo­ple in peak phys­i­cal con­di­tion. Maybe they aren’t processed with Pho­to­shop dur­ing the games, but they’ve had access to spe­cial­ized train­ing that most of us will never know. Even if I had that access, I phys­i­cally could not achieve the same results as Michael Phelps. Nei­ther could the best ath­letes in the world just four years ago. It’s absurd to com­pare myself to him.

Once I viewed this issue of self esteem from that per­spec­tive, I felt much bet­ter. I am not try­ing to hurt anyone’s self esteem when I process a por­trait in Pho­to­shop. The model I men­tioned ear­lier absolutely loved the fin­ished por­trait I shared with her. Por­trait retouch­ing isn’t about cre­at­ing some­thing entirely new from your sub­ject. It’s about pro­mot­ing the best that’s within them. While I can’t give you an absolute line, most of us know it when we see it being crossed.

I have great respect for Julia Bluhm. She took action and achieved a result beyond the hopes of many pro­fes­sion­als. Yet, some­how I don’t see this as the end of the bat­tle between our new David and Goliath. That’s because the scari­est mon­sters are the ones in our own head. It isn’t Sev­en­teen Mag­a­zine or Pho­to­shop that is harm­ful on so many lev­els. I will never be Scott Kelby, Trey Rat­cliff or Patrick LaM­on­tagne. I love them all and their work. Each one gives back to the com­mu­nity by shar­ing their knowl­edge. Not so we can be them, but so we can be bet­ter as ourselves.

The mon­ster is the notion that we have to com­pete with oth­ers instead of ourselves.