Lilly Siscoe 

English I 

Ms. Gibson

8 May 2020

Do Photoshopped Images Make You Feel Bad About Your Own Looks?

Do Photoshopped Images Make You Feel Bad About Your Own Looks?  This is a very big argument, but most people would say that photoshopped images of people make them insecure about themselves.   Photoshop is a very useful tool used for designers, graphic artists, and web developers, but there is a large debate on whether photographers should photoshop their models in the industry.  Editing models pictures has been around since the 1900s, but now that social media is in our everyday life all the time, it is hard to escape society’s standards.  Photoshop often gives people impossible standards, especially for girls. 

Steve Lohr said, “Such images, research suggests, contribute to eating disorders and anxiety about body types, especially among young women.”  In the modeling industry photographers and editors use Photoshop to manipulate an image.  Whether it be to fix the lighting of a picture, to add certain effects or parts of a photo, or to manipulate the model themselves.  But this useful tool can also turn into something very very dangerous, especially for young people who have impressionable minds. Images that are over photoshopped give people standards that most people can not meet, causing them to feel bad about themselves.  Many people look up to people you see all over magazines, billboards, and social media, so when the person they are seeing looks a certain way, people tend to gravitate and try to mimic what the model looks like.

Photoshop is a very big and prominent tool used in the social media world.  There are many apps that do similar things to Photoshop such as an app called FaceTune.  Apps like these are encouraging editing your own picture and doing things such as whitening your teeth, shrinking your waist, or widening your hips.  This can harm one’s self image because they might believe that their natural self is not good enough.  People might believe that they need to be photoshopped to be pretty or to be worth anything.  Now that a tool like photoshop is in hands reach of anyone at any given time, people are more prone to use it. 

In the United States over 30 million people struggle with any eating disorder at any given time.  Research shows that eating disorder numbers have increased in the past years.  This data is likely due to the pressure that social media puts on young men and women to look a certain way.  Many people are desperate to look like someone on social media, when in fact they themselves might not look like that in real life.  People need realistic body types and faces to look up to, not a photo that barely looks like it did originally.  Before Photoshop even existed, society already had very high expectations for girls when it comes to things such as their body and their face, Photoshop raised the standards to an unbelievable amount. 

In conclusion, yes Photoshop does make people feel bad about their own looks. Photoshop can change people’s perception on how they look and cause people to possibly develop an eating disorder or other mental health disorders. Photoshop is a useful tool for graphic designers and web developers, but it is not very useful to use on models in the industry. I also believe that because Photoshop-like apps are so readily available, this increases the use of this type of tool.  All of these factors play into Photoshop making someone feel bad about themselves