What can a skilled user do with image editing software? 

As long as you are talking about manipulating an image: anything.

And beyond that, people do all the time.

We’re now something close to 20 years into a world that digital image altering software users have expertly crafted for us. And in so doing, they have manicured our expectations of reality at the same time. If you are looking at a printed publication, it’s likely that the images you are looking at have been manipulated to some degree or another. 

Now, to many this will all feel like old news. But if you are still incredulous about whether or not such programs are capable of changing any one particular image into another, I’ll link you to a video that shows you just to what degree an image can be manipulated.

Britney Spears Through Digital Eyes

Here’s a video of a digital touch up of Britney Spears for you we’ve gone ahead and curated for you. This is just one, from 2014 and it’s not very long. There are many like it, and you could probably go down a rabbit hole looking not just at digital editing time-lapses, but at Britney Spears digital editing time-lapse videos in particular.

Why is this?

Well, Britney Spears is an interesting character for the purposes of our discussion for a number of reasons. 

First, Britney Spears is a world famous recording artist whose appearance has been marketed across multiple types of media, from film to television, to album covers, to print ads, for over two decades. She has been the subject of glowingly favorable articles in glossy magazines, and tabloid exposes found in the line at the grocery store, in equal measure. 

Second, Britney Spears is a child star that came into prominence at the turn of the 21st Century. This means that many of us grew up alongside her, and have been witness to how her appearance has changed, as our own appearances have changed concurrently.

Thirdly, Spears is a star whose career has existed almost entirely within the digital era. She represents a strange contradiction in that she is incredibly recognizable to the point where almost anyone, anywhere in the world, could put a name to her image, while simultaneously almost no one really knows what she actually looks like.

If you watch the linked video, you’ll see what we mean. The image the editor begins with is very clearly and recognizably Britney Spears. On the other hand the image that the editor leaves us with is much closer to what we have in our heads when we think of the branded, marketed, ubiquitous for two decades, Britney Spears. 

That said, the images are radically different. When you look at one, it’s hard to summon the other into your mind’s eye. It’s difficult to fixate on the details. But when you look at them side by side, it’s hard not to feel a bit surreal. The image on the right both looks like Britney Spears and also doesn’t. A sense of the uncanny valley sets in. 

In some ways the picture on the right looks almost like no one at all.

Paying For Perfection

At this point hopefully we’re all on the same page about the capacity of digital editing software to influence our perceptions of how we see the world.

What this adds up to however is much more insidious than whether or not our perceptions of what Britney Spears looks like are necessarily grounded in reality.

Because you see, the fact of the matter is: every image that you look at has been modified in this way. 

Not just images of famous people. Not just the covers of albums or magazines, or posters you see blown up and plastered to the sides of tall buildings. All of them. Even the candid pictures that you see of stars in the tabloids have been altered to one degree or another. If you have an Instagram account, you know how easy it is to alter light and color. Now imagine a business whose entire reason for being is to share with you images of the glamourous, to reduce the perceived distance between you and the subject of the image.

If you are looking at an advertisement where someone is drinking milk, eating yogurt, running in the park, driving a car, carrying a baby, anything, literally, anything, it does not matter.

That image has been modified digitally to display what the person paying for the image considers “perfect.”

That’s right: perfect. Perfection is exactly what the people who sign off on these images are paying for. They will settle for nothing less. This is because perfection is what they are really selling you. 

So where does this lead us?

The Power of What We See

As human beings, our perception of reality, of what is possible versus impossible is based on what we see with our eyes. We take this information in and our brains process it around and then create conscious and unconscious conclusions. 

Our behavior is what happens when we act on these conclusions.

Now at this point you might be saying to yourself, “well, it might work on someone, but advertising doesn’t work on me. I don’t even read those magazines.”

I hate to break it to you, but you cannot escape your perception of the fundamental nature of reality being molded by repeated exposure to these images, even passively. 

If you scroll on Facebook, have to walk through the store, drive past billboards on the way into work, your mind is taking in images, taking in what it sees as reflections of reality and storing that information away to be analyzed and disseminated on later.

Then you see yourself in the mirror. 

You don’t have perfect hair, or clothes or shape or skin like that person in the yogurt commercial, frozen in time, digitally altered. Your brain begins thrumming, trying to reconcile the difference between the two opposing realities that you have been presented with. 

On one hand the image: designed through human artifice for perfection. 

On the other hand the mirror: a similarly subjective reality that we experience through the filter of mood, emotion, energy and time. But bereft of the benefits of the artist’s touch.

These discrepancies, these dissonances, take their toll on us. They erode away at our sense of personal worth and self esteem. They make us ask the question: “what’s wrong with me? Why can’t I look like that?” This course of logic then opens up our minds to search for an answer that will resolve this dissonance. We blame ourselves, not the perpetual unreality of images, and we put our energy into change. 

Diet, exercise, beauty regimes.

On their own, there is nothing wrong individually with diet, exercise or beauty regimes. In fact, these are the structures, the context, the discipline that we use to achieve goals. Anyone who is looking at overall health will tell you that in order to get the most out of your daily sense of well being you need to have a plan for your diet, your exercise and your personal appearance.

If you don’t have a goal, you can’t plan. 

If you can’t plan, you’ll never get where you are going.

So the goal here is not to demonize setting goals or promoting your own physical health. The problem comes in when our actions are set to achieve results that are literally unattainable outside the realm of the digital space.

Which brings us to:

“Glazed Donut” Skin

Glazed Donut Skin - This entire idea is, on the *ahem* face of it, preposterous. Why would you want to look like a glazed donut? A glazed donut is a piece of fried bread trapped inside a reflective shell of sugar. What would make anyone want to look like that, or feel like that is a state that human skin should aspire to?

According to beauty product website Beautylish: “who wouldn’t want that glassy, smooth, perfectly reflective sheen?”

Now, no one can speak for you, but sometimes we’re inclined to wonder if people read back over the words they have written. To us, that description sounds like something out of a horror movie. Images of a porcelain doll jumping out of the shadows to grab you are brought to mind.

The routine described subsequently in the piece begins with using a chemical exfoliant “a few times a week” and goes on from there. After attempting to rehydrate with oils, she explains the multiple layers of pore-clogging, skin-hiding make-up she needs to achieve the look which she then describes as “well frosted.”

Glassy Skin - This is another way of talking about the Glazed Donut look, but sounds more cute and less creepy. A lot of the products that you’ll find out in the wild focusing on this type of skincare will actually use the word “polish” to describe the process of trying to make your skin look like glass.

As our founder Dr. Hannah Sivak would like to remind you:

“Your skin is not glass, it cannot be polished!”

This is a real deal thing. Your skin is not an inanimate object. It is living and in living it serves an important function that is vital to your overall health and well-being. The skin barrier is literally that, a barrier. It keeps the environment out of your blood, muscles, organs, and all the other components that make your body work, and it keeps in all the vitamins, minerals and fluids that you need for those components to work well.

When you attempt to polish living skin, you damage that living organ, the largest single organ your body has! Damaged skin cannot do its job properly. It cannot protect you from the environment, it cannot hold in the components you need to survive.

Aside from the process of beauty and how you will look, your skin must function properly in order to commit to your health.

First, Skin Health

So where are we going with all of this? Why so many words on a skin care page about an issue that is more or less about make-up, self-perception, and digital marketing?

At Skin Actives Scientific, we are dedicated to your health. We have been since day one.

We see our mission in this community and in this market as being oriented towards the health, well-being and education of our customers. Over the years we have been very fortunate not just to forge meaningful relationships with the people that buy our products, but also to earn the repeat business of people who consider our products to be the best in the world.

Here’s what it comes down to:

We genuinely believe that when your skin is healthy, people will read and interpret it as beautiful.

This is equally true for men as it is for women. 

Type “Photoshop Makeover” into your internet browser and see what comes up. In attempting to look more “beautiful” advertisers are attempting to erase the signs of aging from the faces and features of their subjects. 

What skin is the most youthful and flawless? The skin of babies and infants. The skin of the young, where not only is every system functioning, it is functioning at peak capacity. It is skin that has very little exposure to free radicals in the environment.

If you want your skin to erase wrinkles, lines, uneven tone or texture, the goal should always be to get it to function healthier, to function younger.

What does skin need to function healthy? 

It needs sunscreen to protect it from ultraviolet light. It needs antioxidants to protect it from free radical damage. It needs cleansers to clear pores and it needs vitamins, minerals and proteins to keep it functioning, even as the body diverts resources to other systems.

This is what Skin Actives offers: the building blocks of the natural world, analyzed and thoroughly tested by science, harnessed to maximize the healthy functionality of your skin.

And look at a little baby! See how beautiful their skin is. Does it glow? No. Does it shine and reflect like glass? No. Does it look like it’s encrusted in sugar? Maybe, but only if you gave them a taste of a donut. And really, that is where donuts belong, as a confection you can guiltlessly enjoy every once in a while.

So leave the glazed donut look on the shelf. And put a delicious donut into your face where it belongs, not in your mind’s eye as a standard of beauty.