Jezebel
It's time for the big reveal for our unretouched cover-image contest, and, well, our winner is the July cover of Redbook, on which country singer Faith Hill (and, on a separate cover, her hubby Tim McGraw) appeared as beautiful and accessible-seeming as usual. What's uncanny about this cover is that when the image was passed our way, we had just been flipping through Redbook, reminding ourselves that we'd stop hating women's magazines as soon as our lives became shitty enough to warrant reading Redbook and our husbands and immune systems suddenly replaced celebrities and consumerism on our personal Most Toxic lists, when we paused to think, "Wow, Faith Hill is really hot." We'd had this thought before about Faith Hill, probably in the context of a Revlon display at the CVS or something, but reading this spread in the July Redbook we had one of those moments we often have with Katie Holmes wherein we were like, "Wow. She is just really really really pretty. Although we don't much like her taste in men." Anyway, after the jump, we present the before and after of Faith Hill, Redbook magazine, July 2007. We'll be posting more on this throughout the day, including a point-by-point annotation (read: close-ups!) of just what Redbook editors/art directors found so abhorrent about an already-above-average 39-year-old country music star and mom to three that they had to retouch her into something more befitting the cover of Cosmopolitan.
Update: Some of you are complaining about the animation above, animation we worked long and hard to bring you. So ungrateful! But we anticipated that. That's why we've just put up this, uh, numerically-annotated version of the unretouched photo without animation. Compare, contrast, cackle, cry... whatever it is you guys do.
Update: Why we hate the fact that Redbook did this.
Update: What the blogosphere/mainstream media had to say about the photograph.
Comments
They took away her beauty marks! And softened the appearance of her clavicle. And she lost the Quasimoto back hump. AND her neck disappeared. CRAZY.
I thought clavicles were supposed to be hot right now.
Make it stop jumping!
Remember that Jane interview where her personality was related to various cheeses?
That was awesome.
um why does she have so many lines around her eyes shes been rich for like 10 years
my mom is 54 and doesnt have that many wrinkles wtf
They took away half her arm! And gave her Elisha Cuthbert's face shape (and age). And God forbid an almost-40 year old woman has a few lines around her eyes.
Wow. Just... wow.
Funny, seeing Faith Hill's laugh lines and back fat makes me like her more. Oh, but wait. Women's magazine covers are the antithesis of "Celebs! They're just like us!"
This isn't the worst I've seen. But I love the way they changed her right hand into a forearm.
It's a shame they did all that work to her arms and face but still left her in that fugly dress.
She doesn't look that bad un-retouched. They 'shopped off her backfat. Hot.
This is gonna touch a nerve on Ms. Hill, who is rumored to be a notorious control-freak. I'm just happy it's a celeb I hate. Thanks, Jezzies!
Wow!
She DOES have arms! I was wondering how the flock she was holding herself up.
And, ya know, she still looks really good...for a human. (As opposed to the Cherry 3000 version on the "finished" cover.)
I really want to kill myself after the thought "Wow. They did a good job."
What the fuck is wrong with me.
They faked her right arm, 'cause Faith Hill sells 2x more magazines with two arms.
Please stop all the jumping, and let us get a good look--From what I can see (and you're not making it easy) they gave her a good skin-bleaching, which is funnny: who is 'whiter" than Faith Hill? And, why did they decide to remove her arm and give her a 7-year old's prosthesis instead? Am I so very behind the curve on the current acceptance levels regardng the aesthetics of the inside of one's elbow? I'd write more but I have to go to the gym and work on this....
please, please make it stop jumping.
I re-touch for a living and to be quiet honest these boys (because it's usually men that re-touch) went liquify happy on her arm.
All I want for Christmas is my own personal photo-shopper.
I love how they simply eliminated her elbow.
I think Faith Hill has hypnotized me. The jumping!
Also, doesn't her retouched arm look too long for a human body?
Please, please let there be more. This is just too good.
i accidentally found out that (at least on mozilla on a mac) if you are scrolling with the scroll bar, as long as you hold the mouse button down it stops jumping.
which is good, because i was about to have a seizure.
I feel pretty darn good about myself right now. My arms and backfat look just like Faith Hill's (real) arms and backfat!
for some reason, I cant stop laughing that they even rounded out that wisp of hair on the left side of her face.
What's amazing is 90% of what they did to her body could've been skipped if she just sat up straight. This is fabulous, though. Worth every pen-well, maybe not, but still fabulous.
i'd actually rather do the untouched faith hill than the airbrushed faith hill any day!
You'd think they could do something about her roots after going thru so much trouble.
Back fat, gone. Notice the hand in her lap in the original ... And it's gone on the cover.
Crow's feet, gone. Arm is smaller, dark shadows corrected.
Wow. Goddamn I love Photoshop.
i like watching the pattern of her dress collapse as they warp away the top of her ass
thank you, jezebel! i had heard legends of elizabeth hurley's nickel sized pores and drew barrymore's back fat, but there is nothing like an animated gif to drive it home.
On Firefox pressing the escape key will stop the jumping.
I can understand evening out skin tone, but the retoucher changed the shape of her head. That's just not right.
@the cajun boy: This is not meant to reflect on your attractiveness, but I'd rather be the airbrushed Faith Hill than the untouched Faith Hill.
That's it. I'm off to revive Ophelia.
i dont know why everyone keeps saying back fat, it's just the way she's leaning that gives her the quasimodo. i'm not a faith hill fan but she looks great for her age. retouched arm is freaky!
The team that gave Sarah Michelle Gellar a claw for a hand a few years back at Seventeen could learn a thing or two from this work.
The tone in her original complexion makes it look like she doesn't use any SPF. Boo!
The way that arm gets skinnier and skinnier, if it were real Faith Hill would have the creepiest tiny little hand.
In the before shot, she looks like Jessica Simpson without Red Bull.
Wow. You could take all the scraps they snipped and make a picture of Nicole Richie.
It's not just her arm - her thigh is about 1/2 the size of the original too. WHY DID THEY DO THAT to her jaw?? Can none of these celebrities put it in a contract that they refuse to be photoshopped into oblivion?? That Dove ad has nothing on this scary jumping comparison.
@wring:
Nah, there's totally back fat spilling out over the top of the dress. Nothing posture can do about that.
@nycbaby: I believe that clavicles are on the "I love NY, but the following are OVAHRATED!" thread over at Datalounge.
good god, her arm became like ten feet long and three inches thick!
what is it with the new magazine cover trend towards having it look like an entirely new face has been photoshopped onto an old head?
part of my job involves retouching things and i shudder in horror when i see a lot of this stuff, it's just soooooooo bad
She looks like the typical overly tanned gone-to-fat desperate-to-look-younger (dressed inappropriately for her age) middle-aged woman who was once unimaginatively hot-ish. In other words, pre-photoshop, she looks a lot like me. Prettier hair though, but yes, thinning; and maybe the camera does add 10 lbs because i think she's quite a bit more of a fatty than me too. Personally, I can never get past the distorted look of her "WHAAATTTTT??!!" into the camera when she was outraged at not being named Country Enertainer of the Year, particularly as she was already taking bows before the name was announced ... and losing to Carrie Underwood who is younger, hotter, and ostensibly more talented. I feel for her (Faith) ... as least my fade into into ignomity is a private undocumented one. But i'm not a sore loser either.
@One_More_Salute_To_Vanity: But if you're Untouched Faith, you can live free of any fear that your arms will snap off the next time you pick up your kids. Or a tissue.
@pisser: How do men retouchers differ from women? I am curious to know.
Hey! I can do that with my belly too!
Ladies, that's skin and gravity, not backfat. The pose is terrible and contorted. If they let her sit up straight, all she would have needed was a little softening around her eyes. And, seriously, fix the roots.
I have no explanation for the drag queen drawn-on eyebrows, though.
Sadly they did nothing to make the dress better looking.
damn it. I never realized how incredibly ugly the insides of my elbows are until now! Also, in both pictures she looks like she is unhappy; her mind is elsewhere, such as, did I leave the gas on in the double-wide?
Eh, this isn't so incendiary. Can you get your hands on someone we all collectively hate next time? I for one would love to see Posh looking more Miss Havisham than Fembot.
@ediebeale: I was totally thinking Jessica Simpson too. And that arm seriously scares me.
And did anyone notice how red her eyes are in the first picture? Maybe she's not quite so wholesome...
@Trixie from Toronto: Srsly! She looks 15-20 pounds thinner!
It's also interesting that she looks more down-to-earth, female-friendly in the untouched photo because her pose in comfortable and open, whereas the touched up version makes her look more come-hither-ly, as if men are buying redbook. Although I wonder if market research says that women respond to sexy pics of women better than friendly pics of women...does anyone know?
Seriously - I want to plumb the depths of her... crows feet.
I can only hope to look that good when I become a woman.
Oh yeah - can we see the runners-up?