Take a picture; lose ten pounds
It’s true; I couldn’t make this up. A friend and I were discussing how CBS had used some kind of photographic technology to slim down Katie Couric to promote her debut as the first female anchor of the evening news.
Well, it turns out that you, too, can instantly lose weight and appear slimmer in a photograph. On Hewlett Packard’s shopping web site, there are a slew of digital cameras that take off those extra ten pounds and instantly slim you down.
Underneath the seductive words, “Slimming photos with HP digital cameras,” appears this teaser: “They say cameras add ten pounds, but HP digital cameras can help reverse that effect. The slimming feature, available on select HP digital camera models, is a subtle effect that can instantly trim off pounds from the subjects in your photos!”
Additional copy says that this special feature creates
“Photos that flatter: The effect is subtle-subjects still look like themselves. Can be adjusted for a more dramatic effect. See a before and after version and decide which to keep."
Right. I think I’ll pick the one that makes me look like wider and broader. Sure.
Just in case this still seems unbelievable to you, go to http://www.hp.com/united-states/consumer/digital_photography/tours/slimming/index_f.html
and see for yourself.
Talk about a society that loves instant gratification. Calling all Americans who are obsessed with their weight. Forget about exercise or eating less. Stop worrying. You won’t be the one who gets diabetes; public health officials are just health nuts who waste the public’s money. You know that mothers and men lie when they say that character is more important than your appearance. So, just get a friend to snap a photo and you too, like Katie Couric, can slim down and look just like your real self.
Think of the protocols that could develop around who is allowed to take one's picture.
What's next, adapting this technology to mirrors?
September 6, 2006 9:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
Wow, what a whiny post.
September 7, 2006 5:03 AM | Reply | Permalink
This is exactly the kind of lame ass, everything is grist for the mill reporting that has come to characterize the press. Here we have in the first paragraph, two friends sitting around and gossiping about some celebrity, idly speculating if she's really as thin as she looks, and by the end of the article, it isn't gossip anymore, it's fact. And not only is it fact, but because they were yakking about it, it is of such cultural and national interest, so new and unheard of, that it must be published as an object lesson to the rest of America - "folks, please, watch your diet, you don't want to become a slob like Katie Couric even though there's something new out there that touches up photos...no, really! It's a fact - Katie Couric had her photos retouched with this new HP program."
This is exactly what reporters did to Al Gore - gossipy speculation by reporters and columnists that became a fact that was used to judge his fitness to be President of the United States - "I wonder if Naomi Wolf told Gore to wear earth tones...Naomi Wolf told Gore to wear earth tones...Gore wears earth tones to pander to his audience...Gore will do anything to become President, even change his wardrobe!"
In plainer words, you don't know a goddamned thing about what photographic techniques CBS might or might not have used, you don't know a goddamned thing about photography retouch which has been around as long as photography and you don't have the goddamned discernment to understand the difference between bullshit gossip and fact.
I am sick of this kind of shit passing for punditry!
September 7, 2006 7:38 AM | Reply | Permalink
I have seen Katie in person and she is very petit
and she is hardly fat.
September 7, 2006 11:37 AM | Reply | Permalink
Ruth, there's one important tidbit that's missing from your post.
That you and TPM and its affiliates and subsidiaries are not associated with Hewlett Packard, its associates and its subsidiaries.
Until then, you and TPM, its affiliates and subsidiaries are now HP shills.
=================
Just a suggestion. Cough up that disclaimer fast.
September 7, 2006 11:45 AM | Reply | Permalink
Well, when just under 30% of the country, or nearly 2/3, are overweight or obese; there has to be some way to counteract the pandemic.
September 7, 2006 11:40 PM | Reply | Permalink