I would like to spend some time on this blog covering the topic of my thesis project. I am currently reseraching digital manipulation and the fashion magazine industry. The more I research, the more interesting this topic becomes.
I believe this is a very good time to pursue this topic for two main reasons from the public’s point of view. First, the public has become more aware of the airbrushing and the digital alterations that have started gracing not only the magazine covers, but personal websites, and movie posters to name a few. Software like Adobe’s Photoshop (one of my major foci in this project) have made it so easy for the public to not only perform the same tasks the retouchers for and somehow are able to make it seem normal.
But, how normal is this? How normal is it to completely disfigure a person just to make them appear so perfect, that they become almost inhuman? I wish this is where the retouchers were stopping today. Today, the retouchers take one person’s hands and attach it to somebody else’s body, take another’s feet, etc. etc.
What let’s the people in charge do this? I will (hopefully) be speaking to a few fashion magazine editors about their thoughts about digital manipulations. Editors have been known to be quite tight-lipped about this subject, so I’m going to have to be very careful in how I approach them and how I get my information.
I will be keeping this blog updated starting today, since I will be working on this project throughout the summer. If any of you know anything that can help me, feel free to drop a line and let me know. 
