beauty standards

At first glance, the above video seems like any other beauty commercial: beautiful women, a flashy soundtrack, and promises of perfection. Keep watching, though, and you'll find that the key "product" is Fotoshop by Adobé. Filmmaker Jesse Rosten created the faux commercial as commentary on the prevalence of Photoshop, and we're betting his video will reach a million views by the week's end. We caught up with him to find out why he created the spot, what he hopes people will take away from it, and whether he's a Photoshop user himself.

BellaSugar: The idea for Fotoshop came to you while watching an infomercial with before-and-after pictures that looked identical, just Photoshopped. What moved you from watching the commercial to do a project about the subject?
Jesse Rosten: I suppose I just like to make things. They say when you have a song stuck in your head the remedy is to listen to the actual song. It's like that with me and ideas. If I get an idea that I'm passionate about, I tend to obsess over them. The only cure is to go produce the idea. The beauty of modern filmmaking tools and internet distribution is that one doesn't need permission anymore to go make something. This required a lot of work, but was relatively inexpensive to put together. Plus, it was a lot of fun!

BS: I have to confess — I actually expected you to be a woman when I saw the video, but I'm glad to see a man tackle the issue. Why do you think men should care if women have their wrinkles airbrushed away?
JR: I thought it would be funny to have a men's version of the product, putting one's head on a herculean body, etc. But I opted to keep it simple and focused on women since they suffer the most with societal expectations of beauty. This is a complex issue and I don't pretend to have the answer, but as the incidents of eating disorders and anorexia among American women continue to rise, I think it's important to keep the discussion alive.

Read the full Q&A.

Via DIS magazine (site has some NSFW content) comes a new take on a barbershop classic. The W4W Buzz Barbershop Poster ($25) features women wearing a variety of short hairstyles, from buzz cuts to fauxhawks to fades. While the poster points out that anyone can wear these styles, it also raises questions about the symbolic power of a haircut.

"More than any other stylistic signifier, hair has become our window into lesbian visibility," writes Katerina Llanes in an accompanying essay. "The shorter the hair, the more visibly identifiable one becomes as a lesbian." (As Llanes acknowledges, many lesbians don't keep their hair short.) In exploring what short hair means for gender roles and queer visibility, this poster is worth a long look.

If you're fascinated by how beauty affects society, go bookmark Newsweek's special report on the subject. The series of articles examines the politics of beauty — because, whether it's fair or not, our culture is overwhelmingly lookist.

The stories are all worth reading, particularly these poll results about beauty in the workplace. (Depressingly, hiring managers admitted that on average, they ranked a person's appearance more important than her education.) And this essay highlighting the double standards of beauty for men and women feels like a modern version of Gloria Steinem's famous If Men Could Menstruate essay. Not everything is as strong — we're unconvinced that all makeup artists are conniving tricksters out to get your money — but all of the stories provide plenty to think about. Definitely worth a read.

Do beauty and employment go hand in hand? Not always. Two notable cases have popped up in the news this week, asking us to examine how appearance affects women on the job. And the findings aren't very pretty.

Five female Al-Jazeera presenters, including Joumana Nammour (pictured), have quit to protest editor Ayman Jaballah's commentary on their "immodest" appearance. Unlike some other Al-Jazeera presenters, all five regularly appeared with their hair uncovered, prompting Jaballah to question their decency. After months of harassment complaints went unanswered by the TV network, the presenters resigned. (Three other women have registered protests but remain employed.)

To see what's going on in the States, keep reading.

Do you think you're attractive? If you answered no, you're sadly not alone. Mother Jones magazine unearthed a fascinating statistic: 20 percent of women and 10 percent of men describe themselves as unattractive. That's depressing enough, but check this: 12 years ago, only one percent of all Americans did the same.

So what's behind the jump? It's unlikely that the general population abruptly became homely, and perceptions of beauty are subjective. It looks like we're simply being a lot harder on ourselves. Since the original study was conducted, beauty trends of the 2000s made treatments like Botox and cosmetic surgery more mainstream. Digital retouching also reached new heights (and lows). Are these changes to blame, or is it something else? More than a few factors are at play, but one thing's clear: this sad statistic puts a new spin on the phrase "ugly American."

Source: Flickr user Beverly & Pack