Weekend Humor isn’t meant to be taken seriously. So don’t, ya rube.
Retouching has largely affected young girls in that distorts their sense of self. It’s gotten so bad as of late that South Park lampooned the whole notion of retouching in a recent episode. A distorted body image hasn’t been as big of a problem for men as it has for women, but a new campaign titled “Real Men” aims to turn the whole retouching issue on its head.
Spearheaded by “True Image”, a small advocacy group in Brooklyn, the “Real Men” campaign tracks social media for any instances of misogyny and makes copies of the photos of the men responsible. Members of True Image then take the men to task through photoshop by altering the images so that they reflect the grotesqueness of deep-seeded biases.
The retouched images often show those men in an unflattering light. Their faces are unshaven, their stomachs rounded, and their clothes stained. Their teeth are yellowed, their nails lengthened, and their legs fattened. They’re tragically ugly.
“But this is who they really are,” said Dan Jones, the founder of True Image. “These guys are absolute bastards, and it’s about time somebody fired back.”
Since launching the campaign, True Image has been inundated with complaints by the very men the group lambasts.The complaints have ranged from “Who the f*** do you think you are?” to “Shit, I need to reconsider my life.”
True Image publishes all of the complaints on its website where it also displays the retouched images. Jones has purchased ad space on subway trains and buses in New York City, and he aims to expand True Image’s reach to other cities.
The ads that have gone up show the retouched men with the quote that put them on True Image’s radar. At the bottom of the ad is the hashtag #realmen which has seen explosive success on Twitter and Facebook.
True Image continues to track the social media accounts of the men they’ve distorted. For nearly all of the men who listed “In a relationship” on their Facebook accounts, there’s been a massive swell of recently single statuses. If True Image notices a change for the better in what they post, they’ll take down the ads.
But for now, the ads are multiplying.
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