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Hi everyone,
I don’t have a thigh gap. This used to bother me when I was a vulnerable teen, but I haven’t worried about it for years. Not after I studied anatomy at varsity and had my own bag of human bones (with a skull and everything) and understood how people are put together and how things like thigh gaps and broad hips are just random.
Some people are just built in a certain way and some aren’t. I didn’t even have that hotly desired sphere between my upper legs when I was winning gold medals in athletics and doing ballet five times a week.
But this morning a strange thing happened. I looked at myself in the mirror and saw that I was looking rather short and tubby in my jeans. (Since I’m just shy of 6 ft in heels I don’t often look short.) Aha! I thought. I know what’s wrong. I need me some thigh gap. (I don’t know why I talk like that in my head sometimes but I do.)
So, forgetting everything I know about my body and 1st year anatomy, I first just kind of flexed my legs. And then I turned my hips just a bit. And then I put on heels. And then I turned my feet out like a dancer. And then I turned my one foot in like a model. But try as I might I couldn’t create negative space between my thighs.
For a moment I felt very bereft. This is not how a person is supposed to look in jeans. This is disgusting! Was I deformed? Why didn’t the image in the mirror look like the picture in my head?
It took me about three furious, agonising seconds before I remembered. I didn’t look like the picture in my head because the picture in my head is bullshit.
That picture comes from the thousands upon thousands of images we are force fed every day. The pictures of naturally skinny teenagers who diet until they’re unnaturally skinny and then get photoshopped to sell jeans, and bikinis and underwear and cellulite cream and pantyhose and you name it.
I am not making value judgments on skinny, fat, muscular or willowy. What I do mind is the fakeness of it all, and how there is only one ideal shape. How boring is that?
Photographer and photo editor Lauren Wade apparently also thought so. Having worked for NBC, The Style Network and a host of other publications she is well aware of the tricks of the trade.
In a piece she wrote for TakePart.com in which she photoshopped classic works of art to look like fashion models she says: “While the conversation about the media’s portrayal and obsession with an unrealistic and unattainable beauty standard is not a new one, I think it’s crazy how much retouching people don’t notice. Over the last five years, having done many of the quick, subtle fixes that are the industry standard myself, I know that even an image considered to look “natural” is anything but.”
View these photoshopped images of famous paintings here, and see for yourself how restricted our current idea of beauty has become.
I salute Lauren Wade. It’s important that people in the industry address this issue of trickery and deception. Because at the moment we’re raising yet another generation of girls who hate themselves and their bodies.
Write to us and win one of our fabulous Women24 t-shirts.
Love and plump, round thighs,
I don’t have a thigh gap. This used to bother me when I was a vulnerable teen, but I haven’t worried about it for years. Not after I studied anatomy at varsity and had my own bag of human bones (with a skull and everything) and understood how people are put together and how things like thigh gaps and broad hips are just random.
Some people are just built in a certain way and some aren’t. I didn’t even have that hotly desired sphere between my upper legs when I was winning gold medals in athletics and doing ballet five times a week.
But this morning a strange thing happened. I looked at myself in the mirror and saw that I was looking rather short and tubby in my jeans. (Since I’m just shy of 6 ft in heels I don’t often look short.) Aha! I thought. I know what’s wrong. I need me some thigh gap. (I don’t know why I talk like that in my head sometimes but I do.)
So, forgetting everything I know about my body and 1st year anatomy, I first just kind of flexed my legs. And then I turned my hips just a bit. And then I put on heels. And then I turned my feet out like a dancer. And then I turned my one foot in like a model. But try as I might I couldn’t create negative space between my thighs.
For a moment I felt very bereft. This is not how a person is supposed to look in jeans. This is disgusting! Was I deformed? Why didn’t the image in the mirror look like the picture in my head?
It took me about three furious, agonising seconds before I remembered. I didn’t look like the picture in my head because the picture in my head is bullshit.
That picture comes from the thousands upon thousands of images we are force fed every day. The pictures of naturally skinny teenagers who diet until they’re unnaturally skinny and then get photoshopped to sell jeans, and bikinis and underwear and cellulite cream and pantyhose and you name it.
I am not making value judgments on skinny, fat, muscular or willowy. What I do mind is the fakeness of it all, and how there is only one ideal shape. How boring is that?
Photographer and photo editor Lauren Wade apparently also thought so. Having worked for NBC, The Style Network and a host of other publications she is well aware of the tricks of the trade.
In a piece she wrote for TakePart.com in which she photoshopped classic works of art to look like fashion models she says: “While the conversation about the media’s portrayal and obsession with an unrealistic and unattainable beauty standard is not a new one, I think it’s crazy how much retouching people don’t notice. Over the last five years, having done many of the quick, subtle fixes that are the industry standard myself, I know that even an image considered to look “natural” is anything but.”
View these photoshopped images of famous paintings here, and see for yourself how restricted our current idea of beauty has become.
I salute Lauren Wade. It’s important that people in the industry address this issue of trickery and deception. Because at the moment we’re raising yet another generation of girls who hate themselves and their bodies.
Write to us and win one of our fabulous Women24 t-shirts.
Love and plump, round thighs,
