Airbrushing: An Era of Erroneousness
Airbrushing, the process of smoothing the skin, tightening the hips and eliminating imperfections. It's exclusive to bedroom amateurs and glossy magazines right? Wrong. It turns out even royalty can't escape a little digital fiddle.
News broke today that Prince William and his fiance, England's future Queen, Kate Middleton's official engagement portraits were digi-fiddled by their photographer Mario Testino before they were released. Well, congratulations Mario. What lovely set of pictures they are, as far as a man and a woman in a room go anyway.
One insider said “The final portraits amount to a piece of art, rather like the official paintings that would have been done in previous generations, and so they were touched up a little to get them just right.”
"To get them just right?" Does that not imply that before said alterations, they were wrong? Their faces were wrong? A face cannot be wrong. A face is a face. There are no right or wrong answers. Even those faces I'd describe as hellishly unattractive, I wouldn't describe as wrong. Apart from maybe Jake Tucker, anatomically speaking.
The source later insisted that nothing had been done to alter the couple's appearance. Changes were “more likely to have been increasing the contrast between their clothes and the background colors.”
Habitual hogwash is no better than facial fakery. How far do these environmental inaccuracies stretch? I've never been inside a royal palace. How am I to know that the entire place isn't a post-production mock-up? The Royal Family could live on a council estate in Merseyside for all I know.
Given that the engagement photos have been airbrushed, editors will need to apply a certain level of production to the official wedding photos too, to maintain visual consistency if nothing else. Does this mean they will alter the color of Harry's hair? Nobody wants a rusty, ginger nail hammered into the center of a smooth, rich mahogany surface do they?
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