Most of us are just beginning to become acquainted with the age of enhancement, but there’s one group that’s already very familiar with it: celebrities. Famous people have been tweaking their appearances — both physical and virtual — since, well, probably forever. And while those of us who are merely hoi polloi know that the stars “get work done,” it’s easy to forget how much of the mediated world of celebrity isn’t actually real.
The blog Jezebel recently exposed how wide this gap is between reality and representation. They posted a bounty for before-and-after pictures from the cover of a women’s magazine. This week they scored when someone floated them a recent Redbook cover featuring singer Faith Hill. (The clips above are from those pictures.) Go check it out. If you’ve never seen something like this before, you’ll be amazed.
So what’s this have to do with bioethics? When we talk about enhancement we’re stating that we can somehow be better than our current condition. But what does it mean to be “better?” What’s the target? For better or worse, our standards of beauty are in large part formed by what we see in the media. But as the photos above demonstrate, much of what we see in the media doesn’t actually exist. You want to look like Faith Hill? Well, Faith Hill doesn’t look like Faith Hill. How does Katie Couric stay so skinny? She doesn’t. And Heidi Klum may be a (lovely) genetic freak, but she’s not immune from gravity.
In the future maybe we all will be able to look as good as the virtual Faith Hill. But it seems like we’re setting ourselves up to be disappointed.
If you’re interested in seeing more of the before-and-after world, The Art of DeTouch pulls back the curtain.
-Greg Dahlmann
Magazine cover photos from Jezebel