Photoshop lies

Once I was browsing through YouTube and I found several interesting videos entitled "celebrities photoshopped" and "celebrities without make up". Honestly, I couldn't believe my eyes. I have found women which world presents as an examples of beauty, icons, idols, "the most sexy people of the world" etc. looking just like any other common women easily found in shops or on the streets. No perfect skins, no perfect shaped bodies, no perfect make up...it really made me think.

I know that nobody is perfect and I am not jealous of celebrities because they are dealing with problems I really wouldn't like to have and I don't think that money they make are worth it (no privacy, paparazzi hiding behind every bush, every step they make is watched and judged by public, stalkers, mentally ill fans, made up crap in magazines, finding out about cheating boyfriends from the press, etc).
Also, I have never been a big fan of celebrities because I don't find them that special. Maybe some of them might be great singers or great actors and they may appear absolutely gorgeous on photo's or on TV but most of the time "products" they sell aren't there.
In this article I will be talking specifically about beauty or so called beauty.

I will never understand why are they trying to be perfect. And I will also never understand why magazines force people to be perfect. Why do they have to photoshop every single photo they have and try to convince us that every celebrity woman has an amazing skin, that none of them have acne, scars, wrinkles, dark circles, no under eye bags etc....? Or why do they want us to believe that a 55-years old woman has skin as a 20 year old one?

Of course, it's all about money. If some aged celebrity would actually admit to her age and appear on photos the way she actually looks like, nobody would find her (appearance) any special, therefore nobody would buy her photos and nobody would spend lots of money trying to look like her.

Still, I find it ridiculous because if the celebrities let their photos be photoshopped and published making the world believe that they actually ARE perfect, then it puts big pressure at them to actually DO look perfect the entire time they are at the public (with new photo technology and special equipment of paparazzi they have to look perfect even at home).
Well, that's the choice they make. What I find very unethical is, that there are so many women very frustrated because they do everything they can to look like those celebrities without positive result - not realising that those "perfect" celebrities don't exist and they have been lied to.

Yet, what pisses me off even more - not that I have been pissed so far, but I'm getting there - are commercials. For example - a mascara commercial. The
commercial shows that if you apply that specific mascara on your lashes, they will become very thick and long. They put on nice pictures "before" and "after". Only, at the "after" picture the model has totally big fat FALSE lashes on. And they are pretending that it's absolutely natural and that the mascara is absolutely miraculous. I don't get it. Do they really think that we would actually buy it? Why can not they just pick a girl with beautiful lashes, let her put on that mascara and make pictures of it. It would look more believable and not so absolutely stupid as using false lashes pretending they are real.

Or another example - a face cream. On the commercial there is a beautiful young girl (of 15 probably) with beautiful flawless skin and text next to it says that with using that cream you will achieve perfect skin without any imperfections. They will even give you percentage of women for which it worked. But, they also put on a little star * behind a text and if you search for that star * you will find it somewhere hidden with very small letters that says *TEST IN VITRO what actually means that the test is" taking place in a test tube, culture dish, or elsewhere outside a living organism."  So that would mean that those women they were referring to were either non living organism or possibility number two - it's total crap. Besides that, the photo they have used is also photoshopped. They made her skin look super smooth, there are not even pores showing which is absolute proof that this specific photo has been adjusted with a computer program. FYI, I am using the term "photoshopped" because most people know that adobe photoshop is a computer program used for adjusting photos and pictures and you can do pretty much everything you want with it. Of course, nowadays there are soooooooooo many different computer programs specialised in this area used by real professionals. 

So, after disappointing myself with finding out that famous women aren't that pretty and every magazine photo they are at is probably photoshopped, I decided that I will photoshop one of my photos. I have always wanted to have beautiful flawless skin without any acne scars, pigment spots, freckles nor mimic lines and voila - now I have it! Just few minutes on my computer and if you wouldn't know me you would think that I have perfect skin.....Oh, and I have also make my skin tone less red and I made my eyes greener than they actually are:-)

BEFORE

AFTER

So, what I wanted to say with this article, my dear readers/followers/friends is PLEASE THINK! When you are reading a magazine or watching TV and you see some celebrity and you sigh "wow, she is so beautiful, I wished I look like her..."and then you look in the mirror and what you see is so different that it makes you feel sad/depressed and then you go to the shop and you see her face on some product and you think about buying it so you would look like her - THINK! She probably doesn't look like that in real and without make up you probably look better than her and the product she sells might be a total lie too. If you really want to know if some product is worth buying I recommend to check it on YouTube, there are girls and women reviewing pretty much everything and there is a bigger chance that they are telling the truth than celebrity in the commercial or commercial itself with their photoshop lies....

50's pin-up

 I absolutely adore 50's pin-up looks because they are so simple looking. They are pretty much only three things going on - brows, bold eyeliner with false lashes and red lips, everything else is tuned down.

With this look I have started with face primer from Gosh and my all time favourite foundation from Vichy Dermablend in shade 25 Nude because it has so light formula and very heavy coverage (which is something I require) so I don't have to apply much of it. I did light contouring with medium taupe brown eyeshadow.
For the eyes I have started with base for which I used Maybelline Super Stay concealer in shade 2, then I apply white Sleek eyeshadow (using Matt v2 palette), then I applied light beige and darker beige mixed with brown into crease (from same palette). I mainly concentrated onto eyeliner - I used L'Oréal gel liner with black matt shadow on top of it to avoid shine and also protect from creasing. Then I applied thin layer of mascara and I used false half lashes only for outer parts. In my opinion half lashes look more natural and not so obvious than full lashes. After lash glue dried I apply bit more liner on top of it just to hide it (very important step if you use false lashes). Than I applied white pencil into waterline and mascara on bottom lashes.
For lips I have used Maybelline Super Stay 24H, my absolutely favourite lipstick so far in shade 510 Red Passion and I went bit over the line (on op lip), just to see how would it look like because my model has top lip bit smaller than bottom one. And, as I have mentioned in my earlier posts, when using bright or dark lipsticks it is mostly very convenient to extend it slightly more over the line as you might usually do with nude lip colours because they optically make lips look smaller.
I finished off with brows, I used as always my Anastasia Dipbrow pomade in shade Chocolate, which fits the most of my models (as long as they are brunettes). I tried to keep the natural shape of my model's brows but still I tried to make it more 50's looking - which is neat and bold and quite arched, so I came up with kind of a compromise. I used clear brow gel to make it more natural afterwards.