AT THIS STAGE of the game, you’d be naive to assume that airbrushing and Photoshopping aren’t part and parcel of a life lived online.
Yes, you have the likes of Jameela Jamil speaking out against airbrushing, and more and more influencers making a concerted effort to stop using filters and Photoshop on their uploads, but by and large, it’s still heavily relied on.
Most social media users tend to accept this, but they – unsurprisingly – draw the line at influencers picking and choosing certain elements from a number of photos in order to create one final upload.
Indeed, Swedish Instagrammer, Johanna Olsson, has been the subject of intense criticism this week when it appeared she had Photoshopped images she uploaded to Instagram during a trip to Paris in October.
Johanna was accused of superimposing herself at various places in the French capital, with followers making note of one particular Photoshopping flaw which appeared to show the 28-year-old hovering above ground over the River Seine.
Scorn was instantaneous and backlash was swift.
And according to numerous reports this week, Johanna, whose followers number in excess of 500,000, addressed the furore on her Instagram story, defending herself against the criticism.
“I wanted to talk a little bit about the pictures I posted in Paris,” she began, before confirming that she had indeed altered the images she shared with her followers.
So I did one picture, shot it and didn’t think it looked that nice, so I took a different background and put the background into it. And when I put it up, nobody noticed, so I thought ‘this is good’.
“I admit it wasn’t my finest Photoshop skills. Now in Sweden, this thing has gone crazy and TV shows want me to come on and talk about my ‘fake travelling’.” she continued. “It’s a bit ridiculous I think.”
There are a lot of influencers out there that Photoshop in birds, rainbows or crazy skies and I could do that, but I don’t like that. I just wanted to make that clear that I was in Paris, but I did Photoshop the background, but I’m not going to take them down because it’s a collaboration.
An unpopular opinion or not, I think Johanna’s decision to digitally alter her images to such an extent that she became the subject of considerable scorn is more to be pitied than vilified.
Johanna’s lifestyle, appearance and so-called influence is the envy of hundreds of thousands of people, and yet it’s still not enough for her.
How warped does your perception of yourself and your lifestyle have to become that you feel compelled to create a mix-and-match image in order to meet a standard you have deemed high enough? I wouldn’t want to estimate, to be honest.
Let’s take a look at her main defence for relying so heavily on Photoshop during her trip to France.
I did one picture, shot it and didn’t think it looked that nice, so I took a different background and put the background into it. And when I put it up, nobody noticed, so I thought ‘this is good’.
The level of scrutiny she feels compelled to employ when assessing her photographs in addition to the acute awareness she displays of potential backlash surely renders any positive feedback relatively null and void?
Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate the need for transparency and I understand the criticism – especially if an individual is paid to promote a product – but I do, on some level, question how enviable a lifestyle truly is when the person living it clearly doesn’t deem it enough.
