From: francis@ircam.fr (Joseph Francis)
Newsgroups: sci.med
Subject: Re: Weight/appearance of professional models; Re: Obesity
Date: 22 Jul 92 10:50:41 GMT
Organization: IRCAM, Paris (France)

In article <1992Jul20.172044.20105@javelin.sim.es.com> bgeer@javelin.sim.es.com writes:
>farrell@ohstpy.mps.ohio-state.edu writes:
>
>>>In article <1992Jul10.035136.14946@athena.cs.uga.edu>, mcovingt@athena.cs.uga.edu (Michael A. Covington) writes:
>>> Concerning women who want to look like models on the fashion pages, 
>>> I wish it were more generally known that these pictures are often
>>> "stretched" vertically by tilting the paper in the enlarger.
>
>>And technology marches on: this is from the "Columbus Alive" newspaper,
>>July 9 issue, based on a June 21 New York Times article by Woody Hochswender:
>>"...A host of new video editing techniques are being used to subtly alter,
>>enhance and even transform the nature of reality as it is experienced through
>>moving images.
>
>Most photography & mirrors (thru the same principals) tend to make the
>human body's width-to-height aspect look larger than it really is;
>i.e., it makes us look fatter.

(A few notes to qualify what I will write a bit: I live in Paris, in
the 14th arrondissement, down the street from "Elite", one of the top
modelling agencies in the world. It is their office for female models;
I studied photography at Art Center College of Design, in conjunction
with an exchange program when I was a student at Caltech; a friend of
mine here in Paris is a fashion photographer who has had covers for
Vogue, Glamour, Elle, a number of recognizable fashion magazines; his
wife is the 4th most in demand model in France and Germany; another
friend is David Seidner, who is one of the top 5 world fashion
photographers; works for Lagerfeld, Yves St. Laurent Couture, Armani,
and others.)

The best models are tall and slender because of many things, which
relate more to the clothing than the photography. Cloth drapes, folds,
shapes; you have to have someone for which the drape of the cloth
works nicely. This is best on taller models, since there is more to
cover with the cloth vertically. On shorter models, the drape is
different, and less rich visually, which is to say, it 'looks less
rich', and can make cloth look clunky and hard, the folds are too
large; on the other hand, models for micro-folding cloth (rayon,
linen, as opposed to cotton and wool; denim is very difficult) can be
about any size. You will find that body-models, for swimsuits,
underwear and the like, are actually larger; you need breasts and hips
to fill out the clothes, since there isn't a 'drape' in spandex or
lycra.

As to the width-to-height aspect, it comes from where the camera is.
If you take a photo from a distance with a long focal-length lens,
there are no perspective distortions, and a balanced person is fine.
Most fashion photography works like this. If you use a wide-angle
lens, up close, you can make the person look chubby, through optical
distortion: the center of the person's body, being closer to the lens,
will be magnified slightly more than the extremeties, so they will
appear subtly expanded in the center. This is poor photography. A
drastic example of the effect is the fisheye lens, which curves
everything tremendously.

Most televions and film actors have heads wildly out of proportion to
their body, but not because of perspective. It just looks better.
Think of Cary Grant. He often has an enormous head in photographs, but
looks quite conventional in film.

As for stretching an image by tilting the paper in the enlarger, I
doubt if the customer would be happy with distorted geometrics on a
design. Fashion photography is product photography, for the clothes.
You aren't selling the model, and don't forget it. The lighting is
very full and flat (see many shadows on a model's face?) to show off
the clothing. To make the /model/ look good, you go to completely
different lighting. Believe me.

>Anyone who has had the opportunity to
>compare the appearance of a model "in the flesh" so to speak, & a
>fashion photograph of that model, will immediately notice that the
>photograph shows a very attractive person (by common standards,
>whatever the hell they are) while the actual person is agonizingly &
>often unattractively slender.

Since I see Elite models on the street all the time, and have one as a
friend, I can say: this simply isn't true. The most noticeable thing
is that female models are quite tall, and have very long legs, and a
well-balanced face.  Legs are the part which are most striking. You
can redo a face surgically (most have). You can diet (it isn't
necessary always) which works in photos (most don't diet
compulsively). You can't be 6'0", a short torso and long legs through
surgery. Some models are very slender; Iman, for example. Many quite
large by conventional standards. Most tall people appear slender
because of unconscious conventional-height to-width scales we have.

Models who are cokeheads don't last. If you don't sleep, your looks go
to hell IMMEDIATELY. Do not pass go, do not collect 200 dollars.  They
only drug they routinely use that I know of is Poppers (Butyl Nitrate,
or Amyl Nitrate pre-80's: "Rush", "Locker Room") which right before a
photo dialates the blood vessels and give a model pink cheeks and big
liquid eyes for 2-3 minutes. Works even in ice cold weather.

>This is also true of tv newsreader
>"personalities".  So, photographs & video already show us lies; a
>little touch-up just adds to the lie, it doesn't create the lie.

The business isn't about retouching and manipulation, per se. That
would make individual photographs exorbitantly expensive. The bulk of
the work is just straight-on photographs. Paintboxing is when it is
more expensive to redo a shoot than manipulate it. TV newsreader types
are of the 'big-head' genre.

>It is unfortunately true that most people have no clue about the
>effects photography & mirrors have on width-to-height aspect.  The
>double whammy of seeing ourselves as "fat" in photographs then to have
>the mirror confirm it makes it impossible to match the fashionable
>presentations in ads, which actually use otherwise "imperfect" models
>to present perfection.

Um, photographs don't depict reality. Poor lighting can make someone
look fat, or thin, or deformed. I had a huge argument with a friend
over this, because he claimed snapshots were 'how people really were'.
They are how people really were with flat flash lighting removing any
hint of depth in their face. They are how people really were when a
strange shadow in the background made their dark shirt look extra
wide, or gave their head an asymmetrical watermelon shape. They are
how people really were when too much sunshine made them look like
Oedipus-wannabes with black holes in their heads for eyes. Modern
conventional thought is that photographs are reality. Nope. Reality is
that someone is moving through a series of lighting setups, and their
appearance is constantly changing, so you can see contour. Photography
eliminates this, unfortunately, and must make up for the lack of
contour. A mirror also doesn't create a fatter you, unless it is
convex, operating like a wide-angle lens.  In fact, logically, through
perspective distortion, a plane mirror, the closer you get, will make
you look thinner, to a limit. Get a book on optics.

>Maybe if this fact was taught in high school as a real-world
>application of physics, everyone would not be so "taken in" & we'd
>have fewer instances of anorexia & bulemia & less other psychological
>damage from pressure to appear as we aren't & can't.

Fashion models aren't painfully thin. They are tall and have legs
usually disproportionately long in comparison with their torso. When a
photograph is taken of them, one scales the image unconsciously to an
inner template for "normal", and finds them unbelievably skinny. If
you took a woman 6'0" with long legs, and shrank her optically and
placed her on top of a 5'8" woman, you would indeed find she is
painfully thin, and with a small head. I don't think anyone would find
Christie Brinkley 'painfully thin', or Linda Evangelista. The only
trick is that a slender, shorter woman /can/ be used well because when
she scales up against 5'10", 6' models, she looks proportional.  

Oh. I believe anorexia and bulemia aren't diseases of trying to 'look'
a certain way, but more about gaining control over one's life in
situations where it seems like everything else is controlled by
others. Anorexia and Bulemia have existed, documented, since the
middle ages, when I believe one would be hard-pressed to find
grinning, Red-Headed Italian Whore photos of Linda Evangelista
flouncing across Trevi Fountain. 50's models (there is a classic 50's
Charles James dress photo with 10 women in strapless gowns. They are
not skinny) were bulkier than 60's (Twiggy, Viva...), and Ruebens
models were bulkiest of all. 20's was skinny (flapper), and Victorian
Monobosom dress etchings don't make the models look at all emaciated.

>Furthermore, the use of cosmetics hide a lot as well.  The make-up
>used on many photographs & video models has that "trowelled-on" look
>in reality.  If you know what & when to look, one can deterine
>freckles, pimples, & rough complexion on many otherwise "perfect skin"
>models.

So? Photographers also often use B&W infrared film to completely
eliminate any irregularities and shadows against the skin, to give the
models large pupils, and to soften the photo. Sometimes they diffuse
("vaseline on the lens" is the cliche, though never done) when they
shoot a photo, which spreads bright white highlights and softens bad
skin, sometimes when they print, which spreads shadows and makes skin
look like it has an inner glow. They use color filters so artificial
light can look like daylight, and vice versa. Usually they eliminate
all possibly shadows. The photography is about selling clothing in
particular, high fashion in general - a moment when a fantasy and
reality converge. They aren't about Kodak Brownie snapshots of a
middle-class family playing miniature golf on vacation in Cheyenne,
Wyoming.

I occupy myself by taking photos of large hirsuite nude men in
compromising poses, and though often they don't think they look good
in photos ("oh, I'm fat") I can make husky bearish men look very
erotically inviting; I had someone become depressed once because he
had always thought of himself as ugly, until I took some Hurrell-style
photos of him which made him look devestating, and he felt he had been
wasting quite some time. In fact, I can make conventionally
unattractive men look so dangerously sexual that they are compelling
(jolie-laid).

I think more people would do well to get lifestyles elsewhere than
-- 
| Le Jojo: Fresh 'n' Clean, speaking out to the way you want to live
| today; American - All American; doing, a bit so, and even more so.