Friday, August 3, 2007

Come back to the five and dime, JonBenet, JonBenet ...

The pageant world is weird, as we all know, and the child pageant world is 18 kinds of crazy. That is why we love it so much. I mean hate it. I mean, well, I don't actually know what I mean.

I do know that the spinoff industries from the pageant world never fail to amaze me. Take, for example, the world of photo retouching, as demonstrated on the website for Total Makeover Retouching ("For days she doesn't feel like sitting through hair/make-up and a photo shoot.") Only in the world of child pageantry could a person with ham-fisted photoshopping skills as demonstrated below not only be proud of the end result, but find customers who actually WANT the final product!


The great thing about this website of the person who offers these services is that under each photo sample, she lists the "enhancements" that were made:

Total Makeover Retouching
T
his Enhancement Includes:
*Curls replaced
*Shirt colorized
*Irises replaced & moved for eye contact
*Lashes added
*Stray hairs removed
*Blush added
*Skin tanned
*Brows shaped
*Skin blended
*Dark circles faded
*Background changed
*Photo angled & shapened
*Overall color & contrast corrected

From Snapshot to Low Glamour Pageant Photo
(A more natural look.)
This Photo Enhancement Includes:
*Skin blended
*Flesh tones boosted to peachy hues
*Bow shadows removed from forehead
*Drool removed from mouth
*Eyes brightened and sharpened
*Catch lights corrected in eyes
*Dark circles gently faded, while natural eye creases are preserved for a natural appearance
*Lashes added
*Lip line corrected
*Photo zoomed, cropped, and sharpened

I am not sure exactly what the worst part of this whole thing is ... adults who want to make children look like dolls, or little girls who grow up thinking no picture of them is good enough unless it's obscenely retouched. Click through that site, there is some crazy shit on there!

Of course the gays, who can be a funny bunch, could not leave this alone. One clever boy from NYC posted his OWN photo retouching, and listed his enhancements too:


This Enhancement Includes:
*Irises replaced and moved for eye contact
*Stray hairs removed
*Brows Shaped
*Carol Channing
*Tammy Faye post hamburger and fries in heaven
*Dakota Fanning post cell phone delete
*Ms JonBenet Ramsey, formerly of Boulder CO.

Now that is a touch-up I can live with.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I hope that when I grow (much, much) older, my friends who really love me, will make sure that the drool gets photoshopped out of any pictures that are taken of me. I don't really care much about my flesh tones being boosted to peachy hues; but the drool...

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