Person Shows Off How Unfair Media Is By Photoshopping 17 50-Something Men The Same Way Women Are
Interview With AuthorWe are so used to images all around us being Photoshopped that we usually don’t bat an eye at them. Sadly, usually, pictures of women suffer from way more editing than pictures of men. And again, we’re so used to this that we barely ever think about it. Well, until this Photoshop expert posted videos where she edited men’s images as much as women’s. And the difference made people on the internet realize what a terrible double standard there is out there.
More info: TikTok Part 1 | TikTok Part 2
TikToker did a feminist service by showing what would happen if men were photoshopped as much as women are, and the videos went viral
Image credits: caroline_in_thecity
She took magazine covers and removed as many “unattractive” features, such as blemishes and wrinkles, as possible – giving the man’s face the same treatment women usually get
Image credits: caroline_in_thecity
Image credits: caroline_in_thecity
Image credits: caroline_in_thecity
Image credits: caroline_in_thecity
Image credits: caroline_in_thecity
Image credits: caroline_in_thecity
Image credits: caroline_in_thecity
Image credits: caroline_in_thecity
Image credits: caroline_in_thecity
Image credits: caroline_in_thecity
Image credits: caroline_in_thecity
Image credits: caroline_in_thecity
Image credits: caroline_in_thecity
Image credits: caroline_in_thecity
Image credits: caroline_in_thecity
Image credits: caroline_in_thecity
Image credits: caroline_in_thecity
Recently, videos of men being photoshopped the same way women usually are in magazines and other kinds of photos have been circulating on TikTok. Currently, the more popular one has 1.5M views.
The videos showed how much “smoother” men would look if their faces in photos endured the same editing that women’s faces and bodies do. In fact, it could be said that these heavily edited photos have a little uncanny valley feel to them – these faces are way too polished to be real! The sad thing is that women are edited like this on a daily basis.
All these videos were posted by TikTok user @caroline_in_thecity (she also is on X and Instagram). Caroline is a Photoshop expert, most of whose videos on the platform are focused on all things related to photo editing. At the time of this article, she has over 115K followers.
Bored Panda reached out to Caroline and she shared some additional details with us.
She said that the thing that motivated her to embark on this project was realizing that most people don’t understand the amount of Photoshop applied in the media nowadays: “The illusion of flawless people created through Photoshop is so convincing that we perceive it as reality. I aimed to address this by creating TikToks that highlighted the peculiarity of this situation.”
She chose men because they are usually shown with wrinkles, pores, and expression lines, while women, especially those who are over 50 years old, receive extreme retouching to remove their age. And so, photoshopping men in the same manner shows a contrast in how the media portrays different genders.
After her videos went viral, Caroline noticed that men in the comments implied that this double standard is what is desired by women, and they’re not responsible for it. In her opinion, “North American societal beauty standards frequently align with the male gaze. Unrealistic beauty standards perpetuated by Photoshop affect and are perpetuated by people of all genders.”
Speaking of differentiating between real and retouched content, Caroline wishes that any type of media would require a disclaimer stating that the people in the media have been digitally altered.
Also, in her opinion, celebrities and influencers having photoshopped bodies can have a large influence on their content consumers. “I think celebrities and influencers need to recognize the impact that filters and digitally altered bodies can have on their audience. A celebrity boasting 10 million followers has significant influence, and retouching their body and face sends a powerful message to millions. Comparatively, when someone with 100 followers edits their wedding photos, the scale and influence are not equivalent.”
Watch the most popular video here
@caroline_in_thecity I definitely think about this everytime i see a cute little wrinkles on ‘silver foxes’ and smoothed doll skin on women the same age. #pedropascal #maybeitsphotoshop #photoshop ♬ Makeba – Jain
Just as Caroline implied, ever since its first version’s release back in 1988, Photoshop has been steadily becoming an integral part of our lives. Especially in the entertainment industry. For example, Photoshopping people’s bodies and faces to fit a certain trend of that time.
That prompted Photoshop to be critiqued for promoting unhealthy body image, mostly in women. It does so by promoting an unrealistic body that is not possible to achieve naturally. At this point, we rarely get to see real bodies in advertisements, magazines, and other similar mediums.
Women feel pressured to look a certain way, to have that “perfect body”, which can only be achieved with unnecessary plastic surgery or developing an eating disorder. And when these ideals aren’t achieved, women develop anxiety and insecurities about the way they look.
You might wonder why various companies employ Photoshop in such a destructive manner. Well, one of the theories for that is that retouching in advertisements is done to create an aspirational beauty ideal, which inspires women to buy more products.
Or it could be understood the other way around. Showing the perfect image makes women feel bad about themselves, and so they buy more beauty products.
And so, when the videos of men getting as much Photoshop as women usually get went viral, people suddenly understood how they have been preconditioned to view men getting older as a thing that makes them more attractive. They see images of men getting older in advertisements or magazines, so the eye is used to that. At the same time, women getting older are usually not shown as much, since usually all signs of “imperfection” are deleted no matter what they age they are.
To avoid being fooled by photoshopped images, there are some tips you can take into account when doubting a picture’s authenticity. The most common are:
- Warped or distorted things around the edited object or person;
- Unnatural shadows or inconsistent lighting;
- Unrealistic reflections.
You can also look for more advanced aspects giving away that the image is edited, such as compression quality levels. Or simply use programs that detect Photoshop on the image. So, be safe out there and don’t trust any perfect images you see – they’re more than likely not realistic anyways.
“This is terrifying”: the videos worked as a wake-up call for people online as they understood why men seemed to be getting more attractive with age, while women didn’t
I never did quite get why anyone is okay with women being considered sexy the more they look like a child. It really does show how creepy that mindset is when you see it spun the other way around on men!
People, this is why all those official photos of women the same age or older than you cause you to look in the mirror and think, “It’s not fair, she can afford the money and time for all the special skin care from an early age, plus Botox and facelifts while I look like this!” Or, “What am I doing wrong? I’ve always taken care of my skin… SPF 3000 sun protection moisturizer, cleansing, exfoliating, microdermabrasion, hydration!” It’s also why we’re so jarred when we see an untouched picture of them without makeup. Basically, the entire industries of film/tv and beauty are lying to us about how they look, while normalizing the aging process for men. Generations of women (and other genders) have spent billions on products that don’t work as shown. Generations are so dysfunctional in their ability to accept how they really look they always use filters and tweak their images to fake how they look. Do you think this makes them feel good when they look in the mirror and see reality?
This doesn't even begin to represent the truth, because none of those retouched photos have had their body shape altered. The reality is that if men were as digitally altered as women, all of these pictures would show markedly larger arms at the very least.
I came here to say this. Although I get the point of the article, its not a fair representation of what they really do to women (how ironic!). They don't just remove women's pores; they change her into a completely different person from the angle of her nose and the shadow of her jaw to the shape of calves and the tone of her skin. 😑
Load More Replies...I want them to do that to me! I look like a California Raisin that's been sucking on a lemon.
And wouldn’t you know, they all look ridiculous. But if we look at women’s picture we thank that’s normal (and hence, all us normal people look like swamp witches) because we’ve been conditioned that way. Makes me so cranky!
I know things changed with the development of higher resolution television, but watching shows from the late 90’s to the early 2010’s it almost gives me a headache when they switch the camera from a man’s face to a woman’s face multiple times because it very obviously goes from clear filter to blurred filter and back again. God forbid she have a pore on her face, or even worse, a wrinkle!!!
And in Bones they always blurred below Dr Brennan's eyes! Big peeve of mine :(
Load More Replies...At the risk of stirring up a hornet's nest, or getting bombarded with downvotes ... I don't think that this can fairly be labelled sexist. I work in the publishing and beauty industry in design. I HATE the overly retouched photos and when requested to rework photos, I always do the bare minimum requested. The requests though for overdoing the retouching and removing blemishes, and wrinkles are invariably from female staff. I wish it wasn't so, because I think blemishes and wrinkles give someone so much character, personality and 'realness'. Look at someone like Judi Dench or Meryl Streep; they're gorgeous!
Have an upvote, you are speaking from experience, not supporting it. However, I would imagine that the reason for the requests simply means that the problem has been internalised
Load More Replies...Ah yes, the "sexy" poreless Android look. We have this very odd obsession with not letting women age gracefully. We talk about male celebrities aging like fine wine, however, female celebrities are often told that they need to get cosmetic surgey and use inumerable products to maintain their beauty and youth. While I do understand that some magazines retouch photos of male celebrities, they don't seem to do it nearly to the level that they do for female celebrities.
She cleanly edited 20 to 30 years off of all of them. It's kind of crazy this is normalized for female celebrities!
You think those female celebrities would dare let them NOT retouch the photos? I bet much of this is female pushed
Load More Replies...I’ve never understood why skin isn’t allowed to look like skin. Why does anyone want to look like they’re plastic?
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 More, more, more! Real talk tho: Idris Elba was the exact same amount of gorgeous on both sides...
Oh no, I thought he lost all of his gorgeous ruggedness!! In fact, they all lost their character and personality... What does that say about the female images were presented with, eh?
Load More Replies...Oh but believe me it is happening - Pinterest is a perfect example where if you look at mens fashion, health, hairstyles, etc.... there are a terrifying number of beautifully sculpted and perfectly manicured men. But worst still, their not even airbrushed - they are AI generated. The best are indistinguishable from reality, but by god it makes you feel inferior.
The last photo should have had his chest and stomach shopped too, for the comparison
Nearly every example is a guy over the age of 50. That's a little silly when most women who are getting photoshopped are under the age of 30.
No really .. the filter on Macualy Cultkin speaks volumes
Load More Replies...This would be interesting as a discussion and as picture, but not as a tiktok. Please stop posting tiktoks.
I think everyone wants to look pretty when they are on the cover of a magazine. I use to do this kind of photoshop for a living. I was working on a magazine targeted at teen girls (no drastic changes, just cleaning up shadows etc). One time the publisher decided that the next cover girl would get no photoshop. The model cried. Alot.
The woman behind the one man with his head turned (not sure of his name, though I do recognize him) looks the same cause she was already super photoshopped and didn't need retouching
When you see celebrity age in movies,you know it's photo shop 🤣🤣
When you see them in movies how the age ect you know it's photo shop 🤣🤣
It's obvious ... there is a complete loss of " character " between the genuine picture and the manipulated one. Give me a face full of character any day rather than " plastic " people.
Great work and it shows how when you photoshop like that you take the life and personality out of a person's face but apparently that's fine for women because it's all about how we look and not who we are. This shows how messed up that is.
These were horrifying! Why is it that they looked like they had lost all their personality along with the wrinkles? They looked like very uncharismatic robots! It says a lot about the double standard, and sadly there are not enough older actresses out there showing off their wrinkles to change it (I'm blaming the media, not them).
My guess is that for many of those men, the older photos look more attractive to women than the baby faced ones do. Secondly men are far more keyed to the visuals than women are when rating the attraction of the opposite sex. For those two reasons, of course more effort is made to make the women look younger.
Are all so suddenly surprised that magazines photoshop every photo? This has been happing for a lot longer than you think. My brother graduated in 1982 and had bad acne and you don't see his bad acne in his senior photos. Anyone with even the tiniest bit on common sense knows this.
To make it more equal with women you’d have to make their arms more muscular and 🍆 packages bigger.
Sigh. The subjects insist on it. I've worked in media for my entire career. If I ran a cover of a female actor without Photoshopping the hell out of it, their agent would rip my head off (on their behalf). They would never work with us again, and word would spread. You think an overworked, underpaid art director would Photoshop an A-Lister without their permission and live to see the morning...? Lol. In most circumstances (the bigger the celeb, the more it's a certainty), the actors and their team get full approval of the covers. As to WHY they want to look that way... that's a valid question. But if you're pointing your finger at the publications, you're fantastically naïve.
Now do the reverse to see why it is apeshit and why I don't care for celebrity pr photo's.
Tbf it's woman, who are the MOST brutal when it comes to judging each other, it's their fellow kind they lie to.. can you imagine if a guy dared to print a photo showing it all?.. also, she forgot to COMPLETELY change the body, and facial structure, they do that too..
To my fellow women: WE MUST CELEBRATE OUR BEAUTY NO MATTER WHAT AGE!!! I am thirty eight years old and I never intend to cover up a single wrinkle, or age spot, or gray hair. Those physical changes just show that I am getting a little older, a little wiser, and a little better. All of us are like fine wines, we get better with age. However, some of us are like an aged whiskey and we can cause a little bit of a burn.
There's barely any difference in Macauley's lol. All of these guys look better natural, just as women do! Stop degrading people by taking away the lines that are a piece of them, and bringing women to have false ideals.... so unhealthy and sexist.
Complaining about PS and yet homemade images are now filtered to the point that AI now looks realistic...
Dayum. Macaulay Culkin looks like a completely different person.
They all. look like completely different people! Like every single one went to the same plastic surgeon and got the same nose job. Bleh! This takes away all the character and uniqueness of a person's appearance. But it also makes their facial expressions more bland too.
Load More Replies...It was not the guy down the street that filtered your picture on snapchat. It was you!
hahaha! Get a grip! You're not fighting any good fight here...everyone photoshops. I believe in feminism 100% but this absolutely ridiculous!
I don't photoshop .. blemishes, imperfections and wrinkles are normal. The industry deliberately airbrush so that people buy into the beauty industry
Load More Replies...It's only when someone points it out that we realise how ridiculous it actually is. It's like the whole 'pronouns' thing. Why are we referring to random people as he or she? Do I need to relate what they have between their legs when telling a story about how my coffee was too cold??
Oh bless your heart, imagine being triggered by someone’s pronouns. Ooooh, so very very scawy 🙄
Load More Replies...But that is rather sexist because I don't have procedures, mani/pedi and I'm a woman. You could say that the industry is deliberately airbrushing models so that women have something to aspire to look like... it's other way around!!!
Load More Replies...I never did quite get why anyone is okay with women being considered sexy the more they look like a child. It really does show how creepy that mindset is when you see it spun the other way around on men!
People, this is why all those official photos of women the same age or older than you cause you to look in the mirror and think, “It’s not fair, she can afford the money and time for all the special skin care from an early age, plus Botox and facelifts while I look like this!” Or, “What am I doing wrong? I’ve always taken care of my skin… SPF 3000 sun protection moisturizer, cleansing, exfoliating, microdermabrasion, hydration!” It’s also why we’re so jarred when we see an untouched picture of them without makeup. Basically, the entire industries of film/tv and beauty are lying to us about how they look, while normalizing the aging process for men. Generations of women (and other genders) have spent billions on products that don’t work as shown. Generations are so dysfunctional in their ability to accept how they really look they always use filters and tweak their images to fake how they look. Do you think this makes them feel good when they look in the mirror and see reality?
This doesn't even begin to represent the truth, because none of those retouched photos have had their body shape altered. The reality is that if men were as digitally altered as women, all of these pictures would show markedly larger arms at the very least.
I came here to say this. Although I get the point of the article, its not a fair representation of what they really do to women (how ironic!). They don't just remove women's pores; they change her into a completely different person from the angle of her nose and the shadow of her jaw to the shape of calves and the tone of her skin. 😑
Load More Replies...I want them to do that to me! I look like a California Raisin that's been sucking on a lemon.
And wouldn’t you know, they all look ridiculous. But if we look at women’s picture we thank that’s normal (and hence, all us normal people look like swamp witches) because we’ve been conditioned that way. Makes me so cranky!
I know things changed with the development of higher resolution television, but watching shows from the late 90’s to the early 2010’s it almost gives me a headache when they switch the camera from a man’s face to a woman’s face multiple times because it very obviously goes from clear filter to blurred filter and back again. God forbid she have a pore on her face, or even worse, a wrinkle!!!
And in Bones they always blurred below Dr Brennan's eyes! Big peeve of mine :(
Load More Replies...At the risk of stirring up a hornet's nest, or getting bombarded with downvotes ... I don't think that this can fairly be labelled sexist. I work in the publishing and beauty industry in design. I HATE the overly retouched photos and when requested to rework photos, I always do the bare minimum requested. The requests though for overdoing the retouching and removing blemishes, and wrinkles are invariably from female staff. I wish it wasn't so, because I think blemishes and wrinkles give someone so much character, personality and 'realness'. Look at someone like Judi Dench or Meryl Streep; they're gorgeous!
Have an upvote, you are speaking from experience, not supporting it. However, I would imagine that the reason for the requests simply means that the problem has been internalised
Load More Replies...Ah yes, the "sexy" poreless Android look. We have this very odd obsession with not letting women age gracefully. We talk about male celebrities aging like fine wine, however, female celebrities are often told that they need to get cosmetic surgey and use inumerable products to maintain their beauty and youth. While I do understand that some magazines retouch photos of male celebrities, they don't seem to do it nearly to the level that they do for female celebrities.
She cleanly edited 20 to 30 years off of all of them. It's kind of crazy this is normalized for female celebrities!
You think those female celebrities would dare let them NOT retouch the photos? I bet much of this is female pushed
Load More Replies...I’ve never understood why skin isn’t allowed to look like skin. Why does anyone want to look like they’re plastic?
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 More, more, more! Real talk tho: Idris Elba was the exact same amount of gorgeous on both sides...
Oh no, I thought he lost all of his gorgeous ruggedness!! In fact, they all lost their character and personality... What does that say about the female images were presented with, eh?
Load More Replies...Oh but believe me it is happening - Pinterest is a perfect example where if you look at mens fashion, health, hairstyles, etc.... there are a terrifying number of beautifully sculpted and perfectly manicured men. But worst still, their not even airbrushed - they are AI generated. The best are indistinguishable from reality, but by god it makes you feel inferior.
The last photo should have had his chest and stomach shopped too, for the comparison
Nearly every example is a guy over the age of 50. That's a little silly when most women who are getting photoshopped are under the age of 30.
No really .. the filter on Macualy Cultkin speaks volumes
Load More Replies...This would be interesting as a discussion and as picture, but not as a tiktok. Please stop posting tiktoks.
I think everyone wants to look pretty when they are on the cover of a magazine. I use to do this kind of photoshop for a living. I was working on a magazine targeted at teen girls (no drastic changes, just cleaning up shadows etc). One time the publisher decided that the next cover girl would get no photoshop. The model cried. Alot.
The woman behind the one man with his head turned (not sure of his name, though I do recognize him) looks the same cause she was already super photoshopped and didn't need retouching
When you see celebrity age in movies,you know it's photo shop 🤣🤣
When you see them in movies how the age ect you know it's photo shop 🤣🤣
It's obvious ... there is a complete loss of " character " between the genuine picture and the manipulated one. Give me a face full of character any day rather than " plastic " people.
Great work and it shows how when you photoshop like that you take the life and personality out of a person's face but apparently that's fine for women because it's all about how we look and not who we are. This shows how messed up that is.
These were horrifying! Why is it that they looked like they had lost all their personality along with the wrinkles? They looked like very uncharismatic robots! It says a lot about the double standard, and sadly there are not enough older actresses out there showing off their wrinkles to change it (I'm blaming the media, not them).
My guess is that for many of those men, the older photos look more attractive to women than the baby faced ones do. Secondly men are far more keyed to the visuals than women are when rating the attraction of the opposite sex. For those two reasons, of course more effort is made to make the women look younger.
Are all so suddenly surprised that magazines photoshop every photo? This has been happing for a lot longer than you think. My brother graduated in 1982 and had bad acne and you don't see his bad acne in his senior photos. Anyone with even the tiniest bit on common sense knows this.
To make it more equal with women you’d have to make their arms more muscular and 🍆 packages bigger.
Sigh. The subjects insist on it. I've worked in media for my entire career. If I ran a cover of a female actor without Photoshopping the hell out of it, their agent would rip my head off (on their behalf). They would never work with us again, and word would spread. You think an overworked, underpaid art director would Photoshop an A-Lister without their permission and live to see the morning...? Lol. In most circumstances (the bigger the celeb, the more it's a certainty), the actors and their team get full approval of the covers. As to WHY they want to look that way... that's a valid question. But if you're pointing your finger at the publications, you're fantastically naïve.
Now do the reverse to see why it is apeshit and why I don't care for celebrity pr photo's.
Tbf it's woman, who are the MOST brutal when it comes to judging each other, it's their fellow kind they lie to.. can you imagine if a guy dared to print a photo showing it all?.. also, she forgot to COMPLETELY change the body, and facial structure, they do that too..
To my fellow women: WE MUST CELEBRATE OUR BEAUTY NO MATTER WHAT AGE!!! I am thirty eight years old and I never intend to cover up a single wrinkle, or age spot, or gray hair. Those physical changes just show that I am getting a little older, a little wiser, and a little better. All of us are like fine wines, we get better with age. However, some of us are like an aged whiskey and we can cause a little bit of a burn.
There's barely any difference in Macauley's lol. All of these guys look better natural, just as women do! Stop degrading people by taking away the lines that are a piece of them, and bringing women to have false ideals.... so unhealthy and sexist.
Complaining about PS and yet homemade images are now filtered to the point that AI now looks realistic...
Dayum. Macaulay Culkin looks like a completely different person.
They all. look like completely different people! Like every single one went to the same plastic surgeon and got the same nose job. Bleh! This takes away all the character and uniqueness of a person's appearance. But it also makes their facial expressions more bland too.
Load More Replies...It was not the guy down the street that filtered your picture on snapchat. It was you!
hahaha! Get a grip! You're not fighting any good fight here...everyone photoshops. I believe in feminism 100% but this absolutely ridiculous!
I don't photoshop .. blemishes, imperfections and wrinkles are normal. The industry deliberately airbrush so that people buy into the beauty industry
Load More Replies...It's only when someone points it out that we realise how ridiculous it actually is. It's like the whole 'pronouns' thing. Why are we referring to random people as he or she? Do I need to relate what they have between their legs when telling a story about how my coffee was too cold??
Oh bless your heart, imagine being triggered by someone’s pronouns. Ooooh, so very very scawy 🙄
Load More Replies...But that is rather sexist because I don't have procedures, mani/pedi and I'm a woman. You could say that the industry is deliberately airbrushing models so that women have something to aspire to look like... it's other way around!!!
Load More Replies...
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