It's time for the big reveal for our unretouched cover-image contest, and, well, our winner is the July cover of Redbook, on which country singer Faith Hill (and, on a separate cover, her hubby Tim McGraw) appeared, well, as beautiful and accessible-seeming as usual. What's uncanny about this cover is that when the image was passed our way, we had just been flipping through Redbook, reminding ourselves that we'd stop hating women's magazines as soon as our lives became shitty enough to warrant reading Redbook and our husbands and immune systems suddenly replaced celebrities and consumerism on our personal Most Toxic lists, when we paused to think, "Wow, Faith Hill is really hot." We'd had this thought before about Faith Hill, probably in the context of a Revlon display at the CVS or something, but reading this spread in the July Redbook we had one of those moments we often have with Katie Holmes wherein we were like, "Wow. She is just really really really pretty. Although we don't much like her taste in men." Anyway, after the jump, we present the before and after of Faith Hill, Redbook magazine, July 2007. We'll be posting more on this throughout the day, including a point-by-point annotation (read: close-ups!) of just what Redbook editors/art directors found so abhorrent about an already-above-average 39-year-old country music star and mom to three that they had to retouch her into something more befitting the cover of Cosmopolitan.
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Veni, Vedi, Visa.
I came, I saw, I did a little shopping.
I couldn't see the link, but I can definitely tell the difference between the before and after shots. She doesn't look bad in the before shot. Just a little normal body fat, a few freckles on her arm, and oh some loose fabric in the back of her dress! I think it's so ridiculous how much photos are tweaked these days.
This kills me! I bet celebrities wish they had their magazine bodies as much as we do. The following article details some photoshop guru that makes up to $20,000!!!!!!! for retouching a cover.
Grrr. Thanks for sharing this. We all need a reminder of it now and then, especially me as I look a little too closely at a snapshot I took over the weekend thinking of all the imperfections...and fat arms, facial discolorations, wrinkles...
Notice the "backfat" was cut out as well. I saw this one right away because I had a bit of that today myself in a snug camisole I was wearing.
It's really interesting how her face in the untouched photo looks so much more expressive and playful, while the touched up version looks frozen and blank. Isn't it funny how the brain picks up on little facial nuances even in photos? I wonder just what this culture of photoshopping is doing to our heads.
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"Go either very cheap or very expensive. It's the middle ground that is fashion nowhere." ~ Karl Lagerfeld
So sad! I know part of the reason I hate photos of myself is BECAUSE I don't have someone retouching them and getting rid of circles under my eyes, shaving my nose down a size, and evening out my complexion!