This is a big internal argument for me, although the “photoshop is fun yay” part usually wins. The feminist side of me that says women of all shapes and sizes are beautiful – the one that says “anything photo shopped in magazines distorts women to think that they can be this way.”  Yes, photoshop can be abused, has anyone seen these ridiculous Ralph Lauren ads?  Obviously, this is WAY too thin, to a point of obviousness with photoshop.  But then again, how much can we give people the benefit of the doubt?  Do people realize that images of this are altered, or do they believe that all girls look like this in Cali-for-ni-ayyyyy….

I will never try to pass off my images as something that they aren’t – while I do love taking pictures of girls in all shapes and sizes, I am also a girl who wanted to draw, and instead picked up a camera.  Most of my images are works that, if I had the option to draw them, I probably would. However, where I lack skills in hand drawing girls like this, I pick up a camera and collaborate with models, make up artists, fashion designers (or just costume collectors), and then take the raw data I get, and shape it to fill in curves that aren’t in the picture, because I just love curvy fun lines.  Sometimes if a girl is a bit bigger I will help slender her down to the size that I have seen her at before, something still natural to her body.  Not something unrealistic.

I will also do what us feminists will call objectifying, I just say fun for boys and girls alike – is smoothing out and slightly enhancing breasts, and other lumps and bumps.  Shocker, I know. Humans of all ages and sizes alike enjoy breasts of, well, all shapes and sizes. Few people I know dislike breasts.

However, I still feel the need to explain myself.   I will never, take an A cup and turn it into a triple D cup, not only is that, for my photoshop skills currently, pretty hard, I just don’t feel right doing it. Taking a girl up a size, nip tucking via photoshop here and there to help make her into a pin up model worthy of rockabilly magazines, fits into my idea that my photos are more akin to drawings I’d create, if I could draw.  I just instead photoshop. To be fair, if a woman had breasts that were too big, and I feel the photo would fit better if they were slightly shrunken, I would do the same, it depends on how I want the final image to look.

My dear friend Dave Beukers was looking at the new Vixen Kabarett poster and commented on how amazing all the girls looked, I let him know that, while my girls are very lovely, the cartoony curves were in fact, a side effect of photoshop, and not just un-naturally curvy bodies.  Sorcery! He proclaimed, Sorcery! And that is the best way to describe what I do with people when I give them glammed up photoshopped make overs.

The above image is just one part of many.  My fiance Eric is a talented artist and can do much more of the drawing thing than I can, so we are currently working together on a new poster for The Vixen Kabarett. Thanks to my former advertising professor Cory O’Connor (who, as you may or may not know, is here to #boycottnick – click the link to find out more…), our little Kabarett (The Vixen Kabarett to you ladies and gents) is performing at the 4th Annual Warlocks and Witches Ball.  Be there at Marion Knotts Studios, Chapman University, Orange, California; the doors open at 8pm, be there with your best Halloween get up and get ready to party!

This is Eric and I’s first collaboration that will actually get to see the light of day. Eric drew the background and I edited the girls and helped smooth out some of the finer details, plus we talked about ideas we had for the image to make it better.

Partway through the girl on the far left dropped, hence why is she is replaced in the later image, however, I’m not sure how I can fix the dancer’s arms in terms of how they were lit. Alas, I will figure out something with my trust Wacom tablet and photoshop at my side.  Back to the main point of this rambling.

I honestly think that in high school, I was able to deal with my weight, and the beauty industry “standards” better because I started playing with photoshop late into my freshman year of YVHS.  Throughout the years I improved my photo and airbrushing skills, but the power of beauty in magazines has never made me feel as if I couldn’t look like these woman, it gave me a different vision.  I could start to see where they were airbrushed, it encouraged me to look up before and after pictures of these professional photos.  I learned that even the most beautiful person in real life still got a whole lot of photoshop editing before the picture went to press (Angelina Jolie? Kate Winslet?).  Maybe other girls in high school and college should be taking and embracing photoshop classes instead of the option of ignorance (and thinking that the models are real) or complete blame for the program itself, and learn how to create art, maybe of themselves, maybe of their friends, and explore the artistic merits of photoshop, even go into other arts.

It’s been more than 8 years since I’ve started playing around in photoshop, and my self esteem couldn’t be higher.  I can forgive photoshopped women in magazines, because I don’t have to say “I can never look like that” – I instead say “well, they never looked like that either!”