OK, this is what we know: Photos of women in magazines tend to be retouched. This is likely what we don’t know: The extent of the Photoshopping, especially for women over 50 and the amount done by celebs and social influencers in their social media feeds. The ubiquity of social media and all the filters and editing tools available to even amateurs can spell disaster for the self-esteem of any normally aging woman.
Here to save the day is the commercial photographer and photo retoucher Caroline Ross. On her TikTok channel, she is committed to teaching “digital media literacy skills,” showing people how they can spot what is “fake” in a celebrity’s image and revealing exactly how stars edit their photos. Even though she’s in her late 30s, she is particularly outraged by the way women over 50 are put under the retoucher’s tool.
‘The amount of Photoshop in editing on women over 50 is absolutely insane.’
“The amount of Photoshop in editing on women over 50 is absolutely insane,” she says in one of her videos, with a photo of a partially disrobed and highly retouched Jennifer Aniston as a backdrop. “Everyone is edited to look like a sexy teenager. It’s as if women can’t be sexy and have wrinkles, or skin texture, or pores.”
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Woman on a Mission
Ross’s TikTok is filled with videos that point out how bodies have been slimmed to an unrealistic shape or how armpits have been wiped clean. She wonders what the world has against arm pits anyhow. Her most common targets are the Kardashians because . . . uh, well . . . low-hanging fruit and all.
“In order to create the TikTok videos, I like having ‘before’ images of the celebrity and use paparazzi photos and images taken at recent events, as well as images from fans sightings on social media,” she tells PetaPixel magazine. “I also try to find behind-the-scenes videos of the photoshoot for proof that it’s been altered.”
‘I realized most people don’t understand the amount of Photoshop that’s applied in media today.’
Often, she will flip back and forth between the published (i.e., retouched) photo and the “real” photo to emphasize her point.
“I realized most people don’t understand the amount of Photoshop that’s applied in media today,” Ross says. “This encouraged me to start creating TikToks about Photoshop on images. Through many years of photographing people, and then Photoshopping them, I can usually tell by looking at an image whether or not it’s been Photoshopped.”
“Women Over 50 Aren’t Allowed to Age”
Mariah Carey, in an Instagram photo, left, that is supposedly her getting ready for a talk show appearance, and a screen shot from the talk show appearance. See the difference photoshopping makes.
Cindy Crawford. Nicole Kidman. Sharon Stone. Julia Roberts. Madonna. Viola Davis. Mariah Carey. Linda Evangelista. These are just some of the women over 50 who Ross features in her videos, pointing out the lengths that editors go to so the natural signs of aging are erased. She also suggests that in some editing of photos of older women, some wrinkles are left in as a ruse.
“Retouchers try to hide all signs of Photoshop,” she told PetaPixel. “For example, a 60-year-old-plus woman may still have a few wrinkles in the published image, as removing all of them would look too fake. This often tricks viewers to think that the image is real, as there are wrinkles in the image.”
‘The neck area is nearly always edited on women over 50.’
To point out the most common areas on older women that are retouched, she took a photo of a 58-year-old friend and doctored it up. Most often, she said, forehead wrinkles, crows feet, and other fine lines are lightened. “The neck area is nearly always edited on women over 50,” she says, reinforcing why Nora Ephron lamented that particular body part. She also points out that the area above our eyes gets more pronounced as we age, and editors often minimize that.
In an especially impassioned response to a commenter who called wrinkles “flaws,” she says, “If we continue to see aging women as flawed, we’ll never, ever see that in the media. Women over 50 are already incredibly unrepresented in media. Wrinkles and other things that fall outside societal beauty standards are not considered flaws.”
Most commenters, however, are fully supportive of her critical analysis of the retouching business. “We all get a warped idea of what aging I supposed to look like from the constant unrealistic depiction of older women’s faces,” said one commenter identified as Vegan Mac Attack.
Harrison Ford vs. Jane Fonda
Harrison Ford is allowed to look his age on this cover image; Jane Fonda is not.
One of Ross’s videos focuses on Julia Roberts’s Harper’s Bazaar cover. “Julia Roberts looks the exact same at 53 as she did at 25,” she declares. And her statement is supported by the glowing, smooth image of the star behind her. She goes to work putting back on the photo what she imagines the retouchers took out. “As women age, we get some loose skin right in this area here,” she says as she points to Roberts’s jawline, and then some skin is magically added to the photo. Next she puts back Roberts’s crow’s feet and lays on more texture in the area under and over each eye. “All these subtle changes really add up,” she adds, as she shows the age-appropriate but still stunningly beautiful photo of Roberts.
‘All these subtle changes really add up.’
She also compares a recent magazine cover photo of Harrison Ford at 75 and one of Jane Fonda at 77. Ford is grizzled with deep creases and saggy eyelids. Fonda’s face is as unblemished as a Barbie doll’s. “Woman over 50 aren’t allowed to age,” she declares.
A main concern is for the psychological well-being of older women and those who will someday become older women. “If you’re a 50-year-old woman and you see this in a magazine, this could be harmful to your self-esteem,” Ross says of one Photoshopped star. She thinks the least we can do is identify retouched photos as such. But even more, she would like editors and celeb handlers to “stop Photoshopping the [beep] out of women’s faces.” Amen!
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