August 1, 2010

Are Belly Buttons The New Armpits? Photoshop Seems To Think So…

Filed under: Body Image,Media — Tags: , , , , , — Rachel @ 3:30 pm

So a few months ago, I brought up the fact that armpits are the latest in a string of bodily flaws of women that needs to be airbrushed out.  After the photos of Lindsay Lohan in German GQ got released, where her belly button is missing in one shot, and then is suddenly moved up to her ribcage in another, I figured it was, yes, horrifying but a hopefully a one-time thing, not a new trend.  However, this weekend, I came across pictures of Jersey Shore star Jenni “J-WOWW” Farley  in the latest issue of Maxim magazine – and guess what’s missing in the bikini, midsection baring shots?

I can’t help but wonder – with imperfect: bruises, blemishes, cellulite, tattoos, arms, legs, waists, butts, hips, thighs, calves, noses, wrinkles, hair, and armpits, all deemed unacceptable by the magazine photoshopper standards in their natural state – what’s next?  What’s left?  While pondering this question, I honestly couldn’t think of anything else that hasn’t been airbrushed at some point, on some female celebrity; image editors have “fixed” absolutely every aspect of the female form at some point.  I’m beginning to wonder why take photographs at all?  Why pay a celebrity, photographer, lighting, hair, make-up, and an entire crew of assistants, if the end result is never good enough.  How long before we see entirely computer generated images of celebrities on the covers of magazines?  Only time will tell.


138 Comments »

  1. By all means erase the what is visible on every human body–woman’s power to create life and nourish it through the umbilical cord.
    Erase reality.
    Flatten the belly’s natural swell that indicates woman’s womb, the power to create life, is erased.
    Erase reality.
    Then implant the sexualized breasts to be bigger than they are in reality. Still erasing reality.
    Or go the other direction, same coin, opposite side, put her in a hijab or burqa.
    Erase Woman. Erase reality of where we come from.
    Except you can’t really erase reality any more than you can stop Nature from breaking through asphalt in the parking lot. Wake up women, from where you’ve been parked in the sidelines. Break the asphalt.

    Comment by Vajra Ma — August 2, 2010 @ 12:58 pm

  2. […] http://feministfatale.com/2010/08/are-belly-buttons-the-new-armpits-photoshop-seems-to-think-so/ […]

    Pingback by Girl Power Articles « ShatterEverything (right now's Cinderella) — August 2, 2010 @ 10:14 pm

  3. Vajra Ma: Beautifully stated.

    Comment by Julia Tew — August 3, 2010 @ 9:21 am

  4. I think that it is horrible that these magazines are airbrushing and digitally enhancing and removing parts of woman with programs like photoshop. But these are the things that people in our society have accustomed to see from a day to day basis and they are use to it. This is what is seen as the perfect ideal of a woman. This is what caused women to go and get reconstructive surgery done to look like them so they are as well seen as “SEXY”.

    Comment by Joshua. S — October 21, 2010 @ 9:39 pm

  5. It’s no surprise that photographers are opting for photoshop and airbrush to fix up the areas that they find error on a woman’s body. Maxim isn’t shaping up the idealism of women in women’s magazines only, they’re also targeting men’s magazine as well. Maxim, Play Boy, GQ. These magazines are telling men that women like J-woww with huge boobs is the trophy-wife, a woman’s worth. So it’s not just women that are being affected by media, but their boyfriends who read these magazines will start to degrade them as well and convince them to change alter their appearance.

    Comment by Joanne S. — October 22, 2010 @ 3:00 pm

  6. WOW, I never knew people could be so crazy. I can’t believe they do something as stupid as to airbrush something like a bellybutton. If magazines and advertisements are going to airbrush every part of the body they might as well lay off the makeup and stop being so picky with models..

    Comment by Leora Sheily — April 19, 2011 @ 5:59 pm

  7. I remember this magazine spread and I was so freaked out by her bellybutton or lack there of. I actually looked up other pictures of her to see if that’s how her bellybutton naturally looked and surprise, it didn’t.

    Comment by Danielle G. — April 20, 2011 @ 8:00 pm

  8. how could something that literally every human being has be seen as ugly and have a need to be removed. This just makes the pictures look faker than the already are. The industry really needs to take a long hard look in the mirror and reevaluate their priories.

    Comment by Shawn S — June 1, 2011 @ 5:40 pm

  9. I am very skilled in Photoshop but I can’t believe the lengths that people are going to with this tool. It is widely known that virtually all celeb photos are touched up but this is getting a little bit ridiculous. I don’t understand why there is such issue with showing the belly button. This is a very interesting article to say the least.

    Comment by Rafin — July 20, 2011 @ 6:24 pm

  10. Bellybuttons are in some sense a symbol of life. It is through the umbilical chord that one feed their child during pregnancy. To erase such an important feature on the human body is absurd. The bellybutton should in fact be a symbol of beauty.

    Comment by Tiffany Majdipour — November 1, 2011 @ 12:35 pm

  11. That is so ridiculous. The way they are changing things now, the women on covers are starting to look so far from the real thing.

    Comment by Michelle A — November 2, 2011 @ 4:08 pm

  12. The absence of the belly button only reinforces how unrealistic these images are. It seems to me that as long as a woman’s vagina and breasts are still intact, they meet mainstream cultural standards and are deemed “acceptable”.

    Comment by Bridget T. — November 26, 2011 @ 11:07 pm

  13. Thats so crazy. The picture of J-Woww with out a belly button looks so bazaar. What will be next hands? Why should we feel a shame of having a bellybutton. Everyone has one and it provides nutrition when we are in the womb. we need to move away from such a false perception of what women should look like.

    Comment by Mirian M — January 20, 2012 @ 5:36 pm

  14. I can see it now. Women going in to get their bellybuttons reduced to a smaller size. This is just too strange and I hope it was just a one time thing. I really hope people don’t start to Photoshop bellybutton and making them the “perfect” size. If this type of body altering in images escalate, the results could be damaging.

    Comment by Skye G. — January 23, 2012 @ 4:55 pm

  15. I honestly cannot think of anything else too… I have a feeling sooner or later models are just going to be used for modeling products, but never appear in photographs. It probably just won’t exist anymore because with the technology nowadays we can create bodies and faces that aren’t even real, but can be considered perfect. Watch out make-up artist’s, photographers, and entire crew of assistant’s you just might be replaced by a computer! It’s nothing new and don’t take it personally. I grew up wanting to be a celebrity or a model, but turns out that after taking this course considered being pretty actually costs more than to be happy with yourself. I’d rather be ugly and set free from this society. Thank God I’m just an average looking person. I’ve learned a whole lot just by hearing Kate Makkai. I don’t ever want to be pretty. I want to be pretty intelligent. I want to be pretty amazing. I want to be anything but just pretty.
    On a different note, I know that this belly button issue was huge in Korea. Most of the Korean celebrities went under a belly button procedure just so that they can have prettier belly buttons, but even through all that work their belly buttons were still not good enough. It really sucks to know that people are trying hard to be accepted by society when they’ll actually NEVER be quite good enough.

    Comment by Crystina K — January 25, 2012 @ 11:05 pm

  16. I think companies are already creating images that are completely made up using several different people’s body parts. And even then, from one of the video’s we watched in class, it showed a photoshopper being interviewed who shared that one of their client’s had already asked to have a pieced-together-image modified some absurd amount of times, they wanted bigger eyes, the neck was too thick, not long enough, etc. It’s unbelievable. I think it was during that same video, it was revealed that Oprah had her head placed on top of some model’s body using Photoshop for Oprah’s cover shot of a magazine. It was also revealed that the advertisers did not bother getting permission to use either ones likeness from the model or Oprah. Would advertisers have the audacity to do this to a famous man? I think not.

    Some thirty years ago I was given an exercise during English class in which I was asked to write about what terrified me. I wrote that in the not too distant future, life would be very much like an old cartoon called The Jetson’s. Computers & robotics would take over our everyday duties, we’d fly around in hover-mobiles instead of automobiles, and our meals would consist of pills rather than food. Scary huh? Some of these things have already come to pass! Computers have replaced so many workers’, that people’s jobs have become obsolete. Photoshop is example of a computer software program taking away the need for models, photographers, and make-up & hair stylists. What’s next?

    Comment by Suzy D — January 26, 2012 @ 10:44 pm

  17. Its crazy how you can barely see her bellybutton on that particular picture. Photographers airbrush models to enhance their beauty so you can’t see their flaws in magazines. I don’t why they have make-up artist to do the job to put on make- up on the models and then the photographers still go and Retouch pictures. It seems like their not satisfy enough to just leave their models/clients like that. Beauty retouching is popular now because its so advanced to smooth out their skin and hair also optimize body proportions.

    Comment by Tiffany M — January 29, 2012 @ 3:09 pm

  18. I think that is horrible that people use the photoshop to make a prefect body and prefect skin for the celebrities. They may make female to feel stressful after reading those magazines. It will cause more female suffer from on diet or even eating disorder.

    Comment by Lam Yan Yee — January 30, 2012 @ 11:01 pm

  19. I find it really unattractive and some-what alien looking that there is almost no belly button in the picture. It seems as if she is from outer-space, and not a real human. It is so sad how something that everyone has is now seen as an ugly mark on the body. I feel that if someone doesn’t have a belly button they are strange, not if someone has one. I think the body parts of the human body should be celebrated, not degraded.

    Comment by Yasmin M — January 30, 2012 @ 11:53 pm

  20. I heard that people doing plastic surgery for belly buttons because they want to show prettier and more sexy. I think photoshop to fixing the belly buttons are fine because some people doing surgery too. But I don’t really understand why they are doing like this and nobody cares about their belly button.

    Women’s studies-10

    Comment by Eun Hee Chung — February 1, 2012 @ 9:27 pm

  21. I really don’t see why marketers feel the need to constantly airbrush things our of pictures of women. Their target audience of men would much prefer a women who looked closer to what they will be finding in the real world. And guess what, real women have belly buttons. In fact I have never heard a man look at a women and think “she’s gorgeous, if only she didn’t have that bellybutton”. It’s simply preposterous. Airbrushing out a bellybutton makes no sense to me and I am disturbed at the trend that seems to be taking over today where people have random things airbrushed out just so that they can look “better” in the eyes of a marketer. Real women have bellybuttons and I’d like it to stay that way.

    Comment by Rory O — February 4, 2012 @ 3:19 pm

  22. I believe that there’s no other sexiest part of body as bellybutton. However, I don’t know why the model’s bellybutton is removed by a photo-shop. These days, almost all of models that are presented in the media are edited by photo-shop. But was it necessary removing the bellybutton?

    Comment by Youjung An — February 4, 2012 @ 8:18 pm

  23. It is a sad thing to see that magazines airbrush everything on famous people THEY want on their cover. This means that even this girls in reality are not good enough. If I was one of them I would not accepted to be on their cover if they needed to alter my entire body. Armpits, belly buttons, etc are part of a real women body. It is horrifying to see that to them it is ugly. They are not accepting women as they are. Sooner then later the only thing thats gonna be used is someone face beauty the body will be a computer invented body.

    Comment by Juliana C. — February 4, 2012 @ 10:52 pm

  24. I thought the armpit issue was bad, then I read this afterwards. This just proves how crazy the media and these professional photographers are in creating perfection. They shouldnt even be credited for taking these photographs if they are gonna end up altering the models body. The bellybutton has some importance to some people since it was what connected them to their mother. Why cover it up?

    Comment by Gabriel Y. — February 5, 2012 @ 9:30 am

  25. My guess that our faces will soon be removed as well and be replaced with another one that isnt ours. This image just promotes to women that we should be ashamed of our belly buttons and should be eliminated. Which is completely stupid because their is nothing wrong with our bellybuttons and it isnt a flaw or mistake.

    Comment by Guadalupe Y — February 5, 2012 @ 10:55 am

  26. As someone with experience in critiquing form and figure in art…in God’s name why would you do away with the belly button? Belly buttons are beautiful!!! They balance the landscape of the human torso. To implicitly make people feel ashamed of such a natural part of the body is frankly mindblowing.

    Comment by Taja Eddahbi — February 6, 2012 @ 12:11 pm

  27. The belly button? I mean what is there left to airbrush out then? I can’t see how it would make someone look more attractive or sexy. Essentially, it seems dehumanizing and unrealistic. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t have a belly button. Hopefully, this airbrushed belly button thing doesn’t become a trend.

    Comment by Jessica K — February 6, 2012 @ 12:29 pm

  28. I think that this new trend of deleting the bellybutton and armpits is a terrible trend. The magazine is creating non realistic images of women. Young girls and women want to look like the women they see in the magazine or television and if they see that models do not have bellybuttons or armpits it is going to make them want that. I think that it might affect young girls self esteem, especially since they are looking up to them as role models. I think that there is several young girls that are naive and would believe that it is natural not to have a bellybutton or an armpit. It is going to make them feel left out and not confident with their own. It is similar to the models that are used for the runway or some models are extremely skinny. Most of them are not naturally that skinny some are photo shopped and others are anorexic, which is not healthy for them. There is several teenagers that are suffering from anorexia at a very young age because they think that being beautiful means to be extra skinny and look like the models. I think that all this models instead of creating a Non-Realistic woman they should teach young ladies and women that everyone is beautiful and their weight and size should not matter.

    Comment by Analila B. — March 15, 2012 @ 12:04 am

  29. I am surprised by this, yet at the same time I’m not. The belly button? Really? I think that is a complete insult to women. The belly button represents life and women’s ability to create life and now we want to erase that and disregard that too? It is one thing to try to make certain areas look smooth or fit but this is completely erasing an actual body part that every single person is born with. Are girls and women going to be embarrassed by their belly buttons now? I really hope this isn’t going to be a huge trend because we will have some deep issues since a belly button isn’t exactly something you can really get rid of in real life. The media is building up their very own woman now. They aren’t even attracted to us anymore if they are changing everything up about a woman after she gets behind a camera. If I was a celebrity or a model I would not approve of them modifying me, it’s like saying they aren’t good enough and then encouraging girls to aspire to be like this fake person. The media will never be satisfied with how women really look. -D.O

    Comment by Destiny O — March 15, 2012 @ 2:34 pm

  30. It is reassuring to read some of the bright and insightful comments by participants in this log. It is tragic however to see how pop culture gets away creating unrealistic constructs of women’s bodies. What is next? Becoming avatars? It is difficult not to empathize with Lindsay Lohan’s inevitable destiny: falling into the jaws of an ‘all mighty media’ like so many others before her that will chew up her and spit her out.
    Let’s not underestimate the power of magazines as tools used to disseminate pop culture’s distorted ideas and intentions. Ms. Lohann’s vulnerability attracted media parasites that feed off her and caused her to lose self-respect for… a mere print run? Pop culture and magazines exploit women’s need to please, be accepted and loved.
    I often wonder how many pictures of nude female bodies men must see before realizing that it is only the face that changes! Let’s face it; it is the same old butt, breasts and buttocks!
    Lindsay Lohan’s sexy photos in German GQ looking ‘innocent’ and alluring make her just ‘another’ body made of sexy parts to look at and to toss out. I can hear the patriarchal voices whispering to her: “we forgive you… as long as you pose for us, make our fantasies come true, make us aroused, fantasize and dream, fantasize some more, and then continue dreaming about your naked body and many others like you who do not know… we forget your crimes and misdemeanors… just pose for us for us and we will give you money… and everything will be all right. “

    Comment by M. R. Salvat — March 23, 2012 @ 7:22 pm

  31. What is the purpose of having women be on the cover of a magazine if you are going to change everything about her? The purpose of having a female on the cover of a magazine is because she has made a difference, or impact in society which she is being acknowledged for. If photos of women are going to be photo-shopped or touched up on then why go through the headache of hiring, setting up, casting, and paying the photographer…might as well just take a picture of a barbie and have that be on the cover of a magazine. The women on the covers of magazines should voice their voices and speak out for themselves stating that they do not want anything about them to be changed. The bellybutton of all the things to crop and change during a photo shoot is disturbing…It’s sad to think where our society came from and where it is going. Honestly who cares about how a woman’s bellybutton looks like. We should worry about more important things in life than how her bellybutton came out in a photo.

    Comment by Erchanik P. — March 26, 2012 @ 9:11 pm

  32. I first read the post about the missing armpits, it literally astounds me that belly buttons are now being edited out. How is this an imperfect blemish? The point about why do we even take photos is very valid… what is the point if you are going to pay a photo editor more than the model who takes the pictures? It makes me sad to know that women constantly evaluating themselves and finding issues because of what the media is telling them they should look like. This isn’t something I really noticed until my girlfriend, a real woman, started voicing random thoughts on how she isn’t thin enough or doesn’t fit the model ad, when she is beautiful and sexy as is. In my opinion it is just wrong to take something like a belly button, that just is what it is, not imperfect and edit it out. Honestly it looks quite odd to see a woman’s body without a belly button. Why be ashamed of something that gave you nutrition when you were first conceived?

    Comment by Mohit Sharma — March 28, 2012 @ 3:04 pm

  33. What will be next? What is left to cover up? Soon being invisible is going to be the new ideal woman. Photoshop has advanced so much, covering up all the flaws you don’t want the world seeing. But it has gone too far, now its erasing the bellybutton. Photoshop is erasing originality and diversity; it’s kind of a slap in a face to you parents and even to god.

    Comment by Erica T — March 29, 2012 @ 11:04 am

  34. You are right, time will tell when an actual being will not need to be a part of the photo shoot. They will be computer generated and the only thing you will familiarize is the face, hopefully. While men drool over these fake beings, women who don’t sell their fake bodies and who are not in the spot light of entertainment, are being ridiculed by their husbands/boyfriends for not having the perfect beach body. Do these women really think that their purpose here on this earth is to look sexy and to please a man? If so, I would like to know how they learned that and why they feel that way? First it was the armpit, now the belly button, what next, the mouth. It’s sad to think what our society has come to, from granting women the right to vote, work, and own property, to still soliciting the women’s body.

    Comment by Salina G — March 29, 2012 @ 10:54 pm

  35. When I first read the post about the armpits, I was already expecting for people to say something about people’s belly buttons. Having the thought of editing people’s belly buttons is seriously a ridiculous thing to do. I find this being out of the people’s head whoever do these editing from Photoshop on people’s body. This then shows how it is very sad that women still have doubts about feeling secure about themselves that they even care about how their belly button looks like. This also shows how women are always looking at negative aspects of themselves since media is always making women to go beyond of how beautiful there are already. I say this because I know a lot of friends that are naturally beautiful, but then when they see a famous actress or celebrity, they do ridiculous things to their body to look just like them. When I hear that they even edit people belly buttons, I found this being extremely wrong since everyone has different kinds of belly buttons that make a perfect unique in their own way. For this reason, I believe that this is ridiculous what they do to people to edit their belly buttons since people aren’t making themselves look unique and special in their own way. I believe when people are themselves and don’t edit their body from head to toe makes a person more respectful and more naturally beautiful that people would actually respect them more. At last, people that do this to themselves, they might say that they are looking better than other people but in reality its look weird and odd since a lot of women and men don’t really do that to themselves and it leads to women to be fake within themselves and their body.

    Comment by Alicia S. — April 4, 2012 @ 5:50 pm

  36. Wow! I can’t believe that they cropped out her belly button. I always thought belly buttons were super cute! I never knew that advertising companies were doing this with belly buttons until I saw this article post. I remember being about 15 years old and seeing a special on TV that went over each body part on a woman and chose a celebrity that had the best of each body part. For instance Angelina Jolie had best lips, Hallie Berry had best breasts, etc. I couldn’t wait to watch that show because I wanted to see what “perfect” looked like. I guess it’s kind of sad that at such a young age I was already thinking about these things. Now that I have read this blog I think the TV show I saw about 7 years ago was the start of creating these perfect models from several bodies parts of different women.

    Comment by Patrina C — April 7, 2012 @ 10:19 am

  37. I can’t believe advertisers would feel like a bellybutton is so imperfect that it needs to be hidden or removed. It really makes the woman that much closer to a barbie doll. I also don’t know any man, or woman, who would find someone more attractive if they were missing their bellybutton in real life.

    Comment by MarenW — April 10, 2012 @ 8:45 am

  38. It is amazing at how far the media and photographers go to make people look perfect in pictures these days. While it is one thing to get rid of stray hairs, it is a totally different story to make individuals skinnier, butts bigger, thighs smaller, etc. By doing this, one’s appearance becomes drastically different, and all of a sudden that person looks like a perfect human being. However, removing body parts that everybody has, such as belly buttons, is ridiculous. When has belly buttons become something unattractive or unsexy? With inventions like Photoshop, anything is now possible. What happened to natural beauty?

    Comment by Julianne Insogna — April 11, 2012 @ 5:09 pm

  39. This is why women are self-conscience and want to get reconstructive surgery. Nothing is ever enough. Sad thing but it is the society in which we all live in. It’s pretty much letting the models know you have something I want and in this case not your bellybutton. What’s next photo shots without a nose?

    Comment by Angelica Oseguera — April 12, 2012 @ 8:53 pm

  40. I agree 100% with this article about what is left to fix? Editors of the magazine have fixed everything that they could possibly think of when it comes to the female form not being “perfect” enough. I too wonder what the point of even taking pictures anymore is. They are never good enough for the magazines or the people who run them, so why even try. Like the writer said time will tell. Unfortunately in our society we are constantly being fed that our bodies aren’t good enough or that we will never be perfect.

    Comment by CandaceR — April 15, 2012 @ 10:42 pm

  41. I just posted on the post about underarms and asked what body part was next to be photoshopped, and this was the answer. I actually don’t understand why they would make the belly button look the way they did. I think it looks very unattractive. I googled “Jwowws bellybutton” and saw there were alot of negative feedback so I think that at least, people see that magazines are just getting ridiculous. I showed this picture to my husband and his response was “ewww.” I actually think bellybuttons are cute and I really like mine, so i’m happy to say that this is one battle the media does not win in my book.

    Comment by FabiolaP — April 22, 2012 @ 4:45 pm

  42. When I read this article the video on YouTube about photo shopping came into play. I agree with why pay a celebrity if they are not good enough and certain “imperfections” are going to be removed. Some people already think celebrities have god like bodies. I can’t help but imagine all the people that must think like me, if they photo shop celebrities to look good then what am I? If celebrities are being made more beautiful in the cover of magazines then am I ugly? I can’t help but think why are people photo shopped into something they are not. Wouldn’t the celebrity be against it? Another point I am going to state is, aren’t these celebrities embarrassed when they are approached and they don’t look anything like they do in the magazines? However, celebrity photo shopping isn’t rare I can go on Facebook and see where people photo shop themselves. It is funny when I catch them because the girl will be in the restroom, like they all do, and the line of the door in the back will be wavy around their chest or hips. What does this mean? This means the reason the door is wavy, which all of them are straight, is because the girl enhanced herself in the breasts and butt. Enhancing body parts is not the only thing; people also make themselves seem lighter. I don’t get the point of photo shopping because why try to appear one way when in real life outside Facebook you look another way. Just one thing I have to say, save the embarrassment and be you.

    Comment by Jovanna G — April 25, 2012 @ 3:53 pm

  43. I can honestly say I have never looked at a single person’s belly button and thought to myself ” Wow, that’s a pretty unappealing belly button.” I have always found them rather useless, but I would never alter them, even digitally. I had no idea that there was such a thing as a sexy belly button. Now I wonder “Is my belly button sexy? Can a guy’s belly button be considered sexy?” It’s amazing how the media’s standards of beauty pervade almost every aspect of the human body. Waxing, tanning, nose jobs, boob jobs, face lifts, liposuction… When can I expect to see belly button jobs? Maybe people will be getting their tongues replaced in 2025? Seriously, if anyone has any predictions, I’d like to be able to have time to brace myself and warn my loved ones. Photoshop is what seems to inspire these trends. Maybe the only way to make some sort of progress is to get magazines to stop using Photoshop

    Comment by Richard E. — April 28, 2012 @ 4:10 pm

  44. It seems ridiculous that images are photoshopped so heavily by the time the reach the public – and this reality isn’t really something you learn until you are older, once you have already been affected and influenced by these images. Why do we need to retouch and photoshop parts of womens’ bodies that are perfectly natural, that we ALL have? These photos show IMPOSSIBLE standards, because even CELEBRITIES aren’t good enough to be photographed and published without alterations. There is no reason to photoshop natural parts of the body. It creates an illusion of beauty that is 100% unattainable for everyone, but is presented as “normal.”

    Comment by Kyle Rudell — April 29, 2012 @ 3:09 pm

  45. I find this to be absolutely absurd.When will they stop. Women are human and humans have belly buttons. Its hard for me to wrap my min around the idea that the person who is using photoshop sees a belly button and decides to remove it because it is unappealing. The alteration or removal of bellybuttons support the notion that the image that is being created of the ideal woman is completely unrealistic. They are asking women to not look like women at all but instead like robots. Its scary to think that the next trend in cosmetic surgery will be belly button removal. The more I look at ads the more I notice how artificial women look. Its sad to see that in the real world girls think that they also have to digitally alter themselves. With photoshop technology at everyone’s disposal more girls are pressured to digitally alter themselves. Consequently women forget what real women look like and are left vulnerable to ads that prey on insecurities.

    Comment by Gaby Valencia — April 29, 2012 @ 3:31 pm

  46. My first reaction to this picture was shocking. As the time goes by the more I realize how women are being treated like objects. The media is transforming women and making them see artificial. They are also sending the viewers the message that having a bellybutton is not normal. That is stuped because that is the way god made us, a bellybutton. It seems that having a bellybutton is bad and I women shouldn’t have one or it should be small. I think that is just going to cause women to feel ashamed about having a bellybutton or they will feel ashamed of the size of their bellybutton. I think this is going to harm the young women and will only build insecurities within their body. The media is just making women look like objects and that is sad. It would no suprise me that there will be consmetic surgery for bellybutton reduction or removal.

    Comment by Maira Pacheco — April 30, 2012 @ 8:25 am

  47. I knew about the photo shop and the airbrush to make these celebrities or a upcoming model look good because again we are all human we are not perfect so they photo shop them to make them look stunning. But it is ridiculous to go as far as air brushing out belly buttons, people are going to think people are deformed or those that want to look like a celebrity will end up getting some weird surgical procedure to remove their belly buttons. When will this stop , no one is perfect and these poor celebrities have to go along with this mess, it’s very sad.

    Comment by Kayla Ainsworth — April 30, 2012 @ 2:19 pm

  48. All that goes into a photo shoot is really unnecessary. Since watching Killing Us Softly 5, I learned for the first time that most women in pictures are a combination of women making the “perfect” unattainable female. It is kind of sick that everything in pictures of celebrities are touched up and changed in practically every way imaginable, but come on don’t erase the belly button. We are not aliens. We are human beings. We have flaws. Not every one of them should be covered up. Maybe a few touch ups here and there but creating a hole different person from many other people and completely cutting out bellybuttons is going too far. Also, do the men get to keep their bellybuttons in their pictures? Celebrities are just normal people. Why change them to look immaculate when they are just like everyone else?

    Comment by Katy S — April 30, 2012 @ 8:41 pm

  49. I was very shocked to read that so many “flaws” are being covered up by magazines, many of which I probably have never noticed when actually really a magazine myself. The fact that besides armpits, belly buttons are also being edited out of celebrity photos and thus seem to take away the reality of the person. A belly button to men is one permanent aspect of a person that indeed makes them human. So since they deem that a “flaw,” what is the point of taking photo shoots when they take away the humanity in that person? They try so hard to create a flawless image of people through celebrities as to create the idea that the little things that make us who we are is not good enough for society. If there is a mole on our face, some stray hairs on our face, or even a birthmark on the arm, it’s all gone by the time the finalized photo is produced. It sends the wrong message that we are not perfect and thus not good enough for “high society” norms and expectations. Images like these advertise insecurity and the ideals of what a “perfect” person should look like. It’s just not realistic and can be damaging to anyone who looks at images like this on a daily basis, both adults and youth alike.

    Comment by Jon K. — April 30, 2012 @ 10:19 pm

  50. I thought the Dove evolution video was ssurprising to see all the things they do to a womens pipcture before it is finally realeased and put in a billboard somewhere. However this is more shoking, belly buttons being digitaly erased from a womens body even that now is unecceptable. How far are they going to go with images like this? is there anything else they can take off? I have never looked at a persons belly botton and thought to myself that it looks funny or weird, I think now removing it from the photo looks weird.Once again we look at these images that are not real and now people spend so much time and money trying to accomplish to get their bodies to look like that.

    Comment by Luis G. — April 30, 2012 @ 10:59 pm

  51. I cant help but laugh at this. Airbrushing a bellybutton is ridicolous. What are they going to think of next. I know that women in these magazines do not really look like this and that is Photoshoped completely but to take as far as saying that a womens bellybutton is not considered beautiful is just taking a little far. Women are already looking at something that is not real and to show a women without a belly button because it is not good looking is stupid and this is when we know that what is considered beautiful has become a joke.

    Comment by Denisse Teutla — April 30, 2012 @ 11:12 pm

  52. What people in our culture need to understand is that most of these people don’t look this great in person. Everything is altered for them to look flawless. No one is perfect. To look up to this images is disgusting because it’s not real. We are all beautiful in our own ways.

    Comment by Ally P — May 1, 2012 @ 12:25 am

  53. When I first looked at the photo I was pretty shocked and grossed out, I mean how is it normal for someone to NOT have a bellybutton? Bellybuttons are something everyone is born with; they symbolize a central line that everyone shares with their mother in the womb. Of course media seems to not care and they have suddenly deemed this “ugly”. I can’t say I’m surprised; it seems like more and more body parts are being considered ugly and magazine editors are quickly trying to eliminate them from their covers. What I find really bothersome though is the fact that women’s bellybuttons are the only ones who are being removed. Last time I checked, men had bellybuttons too. Yet I’m going to go out on a limb and say no magazine editor would dare remove a man’s bellybutton. If any magazine tried to remove a man’s bellybutton it would most likely be an overnight cover story. Media outlets everywhere would be talking about “the shocking lengths that magazines are taking in order to promote what’s appealing”. Yet when a bellybutton is removed on a woman, the only attention it gets is maybe a filler article towards the end of a newspaper. I find it so sad how patriarchy and double standards rule society.

    Comment by Scarlett G — May 1, 2012 @ 12:57 pm

  54. This made me laugh so hard! The image of Lindsey Lohan is so comical, how could someone find that attractive? For the majority of my life I have been very embarrassed of my bellybutton. I actually have an outie, and have always wanted to cover it up when wearing swimsuits. At fourteen I wasn’t even allowed to have my ears pierced, so I knew asking my Mom for a bellybutton piercing would not fly! I figured I could hide my hideous bellybutton with some bedazzled jewelry and not worry about it anymore. In 8th grade I pierced my bellybutton with a safety pin, an then jammed a bellybutton ring through the hole. Because I was naive to how piercings work, the hole instantly closed after I removed the safety pin. But I was determined, and after an hour of painfully forcing the ring through, I finally got what I wanted. It didn’t take long before it was grossly infected, and painful. I also accidentally pierced it way too far up, and crooked, so it looked very funny. I ended up having to take it out, and now I have a huge scar from the experience. Reading this article reminded me of how insecure I felt growing up. I now realize that I learned to hate my bellybutton from the media, that they told me that the bellybutton I had wasn’t normal and needed to be changed. If something as small as a bellybutton can make a woman feel insecure, then there is definitely something wrong with the way the media represents images of beauty.

    Comment by Deirdre D. — May 1, 2012 @ 9:29 pm

  55. This is absolutely ridiculous. Photoshopping a belly button? Really? It’s unbelievable how far altering images has gone. When I was in high school I took a photoshop course but we edited images of landscapes and advertisements not people. I actually didn’t even know that editing out armpits was the new trend and I can’t really figure out what’s so wrong about an armpit. I completely agree with the article in saying that sooner than later all images will be computer generated. There really is no point in paying for a stylist, makeup artist, photographer and the celebrity if the real images aren’t being used anyway.

    Comment by Michelle A. — May 1, 2012 @ 11:01 pm

  56. Seeing these women without belly buttons or altered belly buttons was pretty awkward. I know that belly buttons serve no real purpose, but to remove them or move them around is just absurd. What other body parts will the media edit out? After all of the retouching, the model isn’t even herself anymore, so why even spend the time to photograph her. All the retouching and editing completely changes the person being photographed and reinforces that not even that person reaches the ideal of beauty, so the audience viewing these images will especially not reach this ideal of beauty without editing themselves. I think sure enough eventually the models on advertisements will be computer generated like the article states.

    Comment by Cynthia M. — May 2, 2012 @ 9:45 pm

  57. How interesting and funny see where I had just read the article about the arm pits missing when I was just thinking, what’s next, what could they possible take out next, and wouldn’t you know it, they found a belly button to take out. Seriously though, who comes up with all these ideas where it is unsexy or appealing for someone’s belly button to be showing? Is that really necessary to airbrush out, I mean that is such a minor detail on our bodies I don’t see how that could possibly stand in the way of anything appealing to an ad. I fail to see the reasons as to why a belly button is considered so unnecessary that it is airbrushed or photo shopped out so that whoever is on the cover will look better. To me it just looks weird, if anything I actually think it takes away from the picture and makes it look less attractive to not have a belly button. Seriously, I had just mentioned this, where does the line get drawn? There clearly is no end to these companies at which they will stop to airbrush out body parts on women in attempts to make them more attractive.

    Comment by Kincaidw — May 2, 2012 @ 11:22 pm

  58. It’s ridiculous how far companies will go. The models on these magazines already have an image (tall, skinny, flawless) that is unattainable but they STILL need to be edited?!?!? No one looks like what we see in these magazines and to have them photoshop every little detail, like the models bellybutton, I mean come on, that is not right. Is a little blemish on a model so bad that they have to basically insult her and “fix” her on photoshop? Like I said, this is not right. Especially when younger generations see this, they’ll actually believe that “real” people look like this and that is not the truth. When will they stop? When younger generations try and get rid of their bellybuttons?

    Comment by Mitchelle Bareng — May 6, 2012 @ 8:57 pm

  59. I really couldn’t agree more with this article and the important question it raises at the end.Seriously, how long will it take for us to see entirely computer generated picture of our favorite celebrities. It’s sad to see how beautiful girls still need to get something “fixed” or something that is not quite perfect needs to be Photoshop.The idea of beauty that we are putting out to society is fake. This only brings health and self-esteem issues that no one needs.We need to embrace our flaws because they make us who we are. what will be the purpose of this world if we all looked the same. Differences bring us together.

    Comment by Juana Vitela — May 6, 2012 @ 10:15 pm

  60. It is very true how celebrities pay so much for make-up, photographers, airbrush, and in the end it all comes down to photo shop. Why go through all that trouble to look extra “fake”, but after the photos are over, the computer really does the job. I don’t know why, but I cant help myself when I go into a store and see these covers with these celebrities who lost so much weight, and who look so sexy, after buying and paying money for the images that sells, I come to realize its not real. We can go out and do the exact same things they did, but the results wont be the same. I cant believe its going so far, that now belly buttons are not in trend now. It’s so sad to see these images where the beautiful natural body image has been refurnished, and soon all celebrities will look like robots after being photo shopped. I really don’t understand why they would remove a belly button in a photo. I honestly think that is one of the special parts of our bodies.

    Comment by Marianna B. — May 7, 2012 @ 10:45 pm

  61. This is why women spend so much time and money in surgeries becaus they want to be “updated” with the models, when in reality its all photoshop.This ad sends a message we are never good enough we have to ad or remove body parts to look better. I personaly think JWOW looks weird, she already did with her big boobs and now without a belly on this photo?! Seriously I wonder whats next? I really wish society would stop putting so much pressure on women and just let us be just how we are weithout being critisize.

    Comment by Gladys S — May 8, 2012 @ 7:15 am

  62. What next, getting rid of women’s noses and ears? Because so many people have imperfect noses and ears we might as well photoshop them off as well right? I am being sarcastic of course. It’s horrible that magazines are airbrushing and either enhancing or removing parts of women. They are making the “perfect” image of a woman more and more unobtainable for others to reach and it is causing damage on our youth who think that this is how they need to look. What will our younger generations think when they see images like this on the Internet or other media outlets?

    Comment by Kristin Singleton — May 8, 2012 @ 1:47 pm

  63. This is just sad to me, women are supposed to be encouraged to love themselves, and here are these photographers changing everything about them on pictures, which are seen by girls and normal women. When non celebrities see these fake pictures on magazines, they want to look like them, which is just unrealistic and not healthy. Women and teens want to have surgery or even Botox to look young and they may go overboard with not eating and exercising too much. At work, I see the magazines and they all talk about losing weight super fast as a good thing. They also show celebrities “without make-up” and they will get a picture where they look “bad”. It is just disgusting to know that girls believe that if they have no make up, they cannot go out to the store or to school. I think that magazines and photoshop degrades women’s beauty and tries to change them and believe that a man will not love you if you do not look like these celebrities. The fact that bellybuttons are being photoshopped to look smaller is just ridiculous, who would ever think of doing this? What’s next? I wonder what will be expected of girls in a couple of years when technology advances even more and the new “ideal” women changes. It just frustrates me that media tries to change women everywhere you look. Women clothing stores, commercials, magazines, talk shows, and even one’s parents.

    Comment by Sonia B. — May 9, 2012 @ 8:10 am

  64. This is just insane. Photo shots should just be called Photoshop sessions. All images in the media are altered in order to be “more appealing”. The interesting part is that most if not all these editing techniques are manufactured by the male gender. Imposing on us women what they belief to be perfection. Last year I visited the “beauty of culture” exhibit. It should images of the evolution of beauty. Even models who already seem tall and skinny and unnatural. Their pictures are altered. They elongate the legs or make the waist unnaturally thin. Then us the public end up believing that women are expected to meet these standards. That in reality do not exist because they are computerized. Altered by a software. Women need to become more aware of how we are being socialized to look and behave a certain way. Even Jwoww caved and bought into the idea that altering her physical appearance now makes her beautiful. she however denies having had anything any work done except for her breasts. Which she can deny all she wants but the pictures speak for themselves.

    Comment by Esmeralda Martinez — May 10, 2012 @ 11:18 am

  65. As with the armpit article, I found this to be absolutely hilarious. I love that you borught up the point of how unnecessary make up artists, hairstylists, light techs, camera crew and assistants all are. It does seem that everything is going to be retouched anyways so why waste all that time and money? Their essentially creating a computer generated image so they might as well put all of their efforts into that instead.

    Comment by Sophia S. — May 10, 2012 @ 10:58 pm

  66. I literally laughed out loud when I saw this photo. How ridiculous the media is becoming. Where are the real models? I honestly cannot fathom how anyone is eligible to promote the “perfect body” without edits within Photoshop. Those of us who have unfortunately watched the Jersey Shore know that is not what JWoww looks like, and quite honestly it is offensive to see all these edits they are creating to these photos. No wonder men and women have body issues. These absurd images of the “perfect body image” are basically unattainable by any sane person’s standards. It angers me that we are being socialized into this notion of what it means to be physically beautiful by erasing a body piece that all humans possess? Who knows what they will come up with next!

    Comment by Lyndsay P. — May 11, 2012 @ 11:49 am

  67. I do not see anything visually displeasing about a belly button. Sure, some prefer an “innie” versus an “outie”, but I have yet to stumble across a belly button that is repulsive enough to invoke a grimace. This latest trend in editing is just the most recent in a slew of photoshopped body parts. The photo of Jenny Farley in Maxim is perplexing because onlookers are left wondering why her torso is lacking an essential feature. Due to my knowledge of all things pop culture, I am aware of the backstory of the Jersey Shore starlet and it may help alleviate some of the confusion. Jenny had a tummy tuck before she popped up on the celebrity scene. When this type of plastic surgery is performed, the belly-button is often reconstructed and relocated on the abdominal region. Many women end up with a much smaller version of the bellybutton they had pre-operation. This may be the culprit for the Jenny’s case of the missing belly button, but this is only one isolated photo. A Victoria’s Secret model also notably has a barely visible belly button. Genetics aside, Lindsay Lohan’s body has clearly been photoshopped. Her belly button is moved from its place of origin to a much higher location. It is difficult for me to digest the appeal in a higher belly button. It does not logically make any sense or serve any aesthetic purpose. I can not even begin to fathom what the media has in store for us next; maybe the emergence of completely computer generated images like the author of this article suggested?

    Comment by Nicole Z. — May 11, 2012 @ 5:38 pm

  68. Wow. Now the media is getting ridiculous. To not have a bellybutton in a photograph is unnatural. How can that be deemed beautiful, perfect, or better? Photo shopping is getting out of control and real images do not even exist anymore. Even photo spread where women are “baring it all with no makeup” are not even real anymore. If people want to see how humans really look like they’ll have to look in the mirror before they shower and do themselves up. And even real people on the street have tans, makeup, and even plastic surgery changing them. Especially in Los Angeles. It’s like people aren’t even real anymore. And now the media is just making it worse. People mimic the media. What if a common plastic surgery trend in 50 years is to have your belly button removed. Disgusting! And not to mention what this message is sending to children or young adults who are exposed to these images. They must be so confused and it is giving them the wrong idea about reality.

    Comment by S.Lockey — May 11, 2012 @ 10:37 pm

  69. I think now in our society and the age we live in, the human body will never be enough. There are images that people think are images of perfect bodies, but are they really true images for us to look up too. Almost all images of the human body that we find to be perfect have been altered. So yes, one can say that the bellybutton is the new armpit, along with all other areas of our bodies that have been altered. It sad that we can’t accept ourselves as well as others for who they are, we have to change things such as the way or bellybuttons are positioned on our bodies. Who is the judge of where a perfect bellybuttons should be positioned. It’s really just a ‘bellybutton’. A bellybutton is something that a person has no control over. If a person is fat; they lose weight, If a person wants long hair, they might wear extensions, but what can one do with an imperfect bellybutton(well according to the media) the bellybutton is something that is given to us at birth. As mentioned in the blog, what is the actual purpose of having a photo shoot if you end up altering the entire photo anyway? In my opinion, I think we should stop looking at these images we see in the media. We are believing false images of what real beauty is and should be.

    Comment by Glynda Givens — May 12, 2012 @ 10:44 am

  70. I agree with this article, what is the point of paying a celebrity tons of money if the end result is not even truly them. I took a class last year on this, and I don’t remember the exact number, but every magazine coverage has about 12 people used on average. That is crazy to think that when Megan Fox is on the cover of some magazine, its not her arms, legs, feet, hands, shoulders, lips, ears, nose, hair, etc. It really makes an unattainable view of what you are supposed to look like as well.

    Comment by Matthew Smit — May 12, 2012 @ 1:22 pm

  71. I agree with this article, what is purpose of the glam squad and cameras if they are just going to photoshop everything? I understand blemishes and cellulite being photoshopped out or blended to look better. What’s wrong with a belly button? To me that is ridiculous, it’s erasing your life line. Was it to be sexy? It looks weird. If you don’t have a belly button that means you weren’t born, unnatural.

    Comment by Corrin M. — May 13, 2012 @ 5:51 pm

  72. Asking “What’s Next” is the perfect question because it seems that every female quality needs to be enhanced or erased. Frankly, a person with out a belly button would look absolutely deformed. As magazines continue to diminish and re-define what a beautiful woman should look like based on media influences, it causes self esteem issues among women who are easily influenced by the new standards of beauty. Even worse, it could possibly make young girls become self conscious about their bellybuttons. Innies versus outties, people used to be comfortable and embrace what they had, and now they would begin to have issues with the way their stomach looks.

    Comment by Brandy S. — May 13, 2012 @ 6:42 pm

  73. I never really thought about why they go to such elaborate lengths to prepare for a photo shoot (lighting, make up artists, etc.) if all they do is photo shop the picture in the end. I don’t know what’s left if they have gone to such lengths to move someone’s belly button to a different location. It’s probably because they elongated the torso in the photo and had to make the necessary adjustments. Nobody is perfect… until their pictures have made it through photo shop.

    Comment by Avery G. — May 13, 2012 @ 8:26 pm

  74. It’s horrible and upsetting that these magazines companies are airbrushing, digitally enhancing and removing “flaws” of woman that pose in their magazines. They are creating what they believe is the perfect ideal of a female body and this keeps happening because people buy this magazines and feed into there images of the perfect women. If I was the female who was posing in that ad I would be furious, because that photo is not I, it’s an alteration of what they want me to be and who in the hell wants that? I truly believe that this is why women get reconstructive surgery done. They want to look like the models in the magazines because they feel that will make them sexy and bring them happiness.

    Comment by Vanessa Ochoa — May 13, 2012 @ 9:18 pm

  75. It’s upsetting that these magazines companies are airbrushing, digitally enhancing and removing “flaws” of woman that pose in their magazines. They are creating what they believe is the perfect ideal of a female body and this keeps happening because people buy this magazines and feed into there images of the perfect women. If I was the female who was posing in that ad I would be furious, because that photo is not I, it’s an alteration of what they want me to be and who in the hell wants that? I truly believe that this is why women get reconstructive surgery done. They want to look like the models in the magazines because they feel that will make them sexy and bring them happiness.

    Comment by Vanessa Ochoa — May 13, 2012 @ 9:19 pm

  76. I REALLY can not believe that editors have resorted to removing a model’s belly button, and I do not understand why they have done so. I don’t understand the reasoning behind removing someone’s belly button. All models within ads are completely air-brushed to look “perfect.” Ads portray women with clear perfect skin, perfect bodies, perfect hair, perfect everything, but the images are all illusions. I was watching Keeping Up with the Kardashians and even Khloe states that her whole image, her whole “look” is an illusion that is available thanks to make-up, clothing, and extensions. Socially, I have accepted that the media hides imperfections from us but I don’t understand why magazines are now including photos of women with no belly-buttons. Is that supposed to be hot, sexy, or beautiful? Does this mean I should get rid of my belly-button? I don’t understand what message they are trying to send by doing so. I think it is ridiculous.

    Comment by Talia Y — May 15, 2012 @ 3:27 pm

  77. I REALLY can not believe that editors have resorted to removing a model’s belly button, and I do not understand why they have done so. I don’t understand the reasoning behind removing someone’s belly button. All models within ads are completely air-brushed to look “perfect.” Ads portray women with clear perfect skin, perfect bodies, perfect hair, perfect everything, but the images are all illusions. I was watching Keeping Up with the Kardashians and even Khloe states that her whole image, her whole “look” is an illusion that is available thanks to make-up, clothing, and extensions. Socially, I have accepted that the media hides imperfections from us but I don’t understand why magazines are now including photos of women with no belly-buttons. Is that supposed to be hot, sexy, or beautiful? Does this mean I should get rid of my belly-button? I don’t understand what message they are trying to send by doing so. I think it is ridiculous.

    Comment by Talia Y — May 15, 2012 @ 3:27 pm

  78. This is actually really disgusting. looking at this picture of JWOW, I don’t think she looks good without a belly-button. I don’t even understand why they would ever crop out a persons belly button. i can somewhat understand armpit just because it gives off an unpleasant odor, which still does not justify it. But bellybutton? what reason is there for cropping out a belly button. every woman in the world has a belly button. why are they making something completely physically impossible a trend? Fashion magazines should be focused more on the fashion of the person, not the body image. I do not believe that this image will take off because it just looks not natural. many images of woman become popular because they somewhat present an image of something natural, or make it seem as though this could be natural. But placing a woman, sans belly button on an ad is just ridiculous and disgusting by my standards.

    Comment by Alina Bergelson — May 25, 2012 @ 2:33 pm

  79. I’m still recovering from the trauma of the photoshopping of the armpit phenomena but now belly buttons are the new area of target. This is the pinnacle of unnatural. Why even bother using human models anymore if all of their body parts are going to be photoshopped out? I bet pretty soon girls are going to go to the plastic surgeon to get their belly buttons sewn up or filled. I worry for the future of young girls and hope they will not get sucked into this nonsense.

    Comment by Melody S. — May 27, 2012 @ 8:17 pm

  80. What’s wrong with belly buttons? Photoshop has just gotten ridiculous and unnecessary. It was hard to take in the fact that models are transformed right before photo shoots and after. Here is another thing to add on to the list of imperfections with our bodies. my thighs, my waist, my breast, my nose, my eyes, my feet, my hands, my hair, my stomach, my armpits and now my belly button? We believe to think that these imperfections need to be fixed. Later, we will find that there are surgeries to remove belly buttons like there is a surgery to remove moles. It should even surprise me anymore. I just can’t seem to understand, Jenny looks weird without her belly button so she wasn’t done a favor when her belly button was taken away. Now that I think about it there has been a small obsession with belly buttons. In my culture, when I baby is small a mother must try to give her baby a “tucked in belly.” If a baby shows symptoms of having a popped out belly button a coin is tucked in their belly so that the belly doesn’t fully pop out. I know it sounds ridiculous but so is this picture of Jenny.

    Comment by yessica pastor — May 30, 2012 @ 12:02 am

  81. I don’t even know what these people were thinking! I can’t even imagine WHY anyone would photoshop her belly-button out of the photo. We all have bellybuttons, men and women, and this just comes to show that photo shop is severely taken advantage of to the point where images are unreal. What upsets me more is that the models are letting these magazines do this. No bellybutton? This is gross and makes me scared for what’s coming next.

    Comment by Yasmine T. — May 30, 2012 @ 1:31 pm

  82. Who knew that bellybuttons were so uncool? I remember when it was super cool to get your bellybutton pierced back in my high school days. I forced myself to get straight A’s so that my mom would take me to get mine pierced, and when I finally did, I showed it off to everyone. As stated in the blog above, what’s next to airbrush out? Maybe eyebrows since having any type of natural hair on a woman’s face is completely out of the question and must be airbrushed immediately. As a model, I am faced with many unsettling decisions when it comes to signing that contract saying that they can basically cut me up and make me look as ‘sellable’ as possible. Most of these pictures do not even look like me anymore, more like a perfect alien who’s waist is small enough to fit a bracelet around. Ads like these point out the ‘flaws’ in girls and women that are unfixable. What’s next; bellybutton removal surgeries?

    Comment by Ryan F. — May 30, 2012 @ 3:41 pm

  83. Where is J-Woww’s belly button? Just when I thought Photoshop couldn’t sink anymore. I thought the armpits were outrageous, but a belly button…come on. I agree with everyone else, what is the point of human models? With all the enhancing and Photoshop, what’s the point? Women are being more than objectified in photos and this could be harmful to future young girls.

    Comment by Mary Marrone — May 30, 2012 @ 3:44 pm

  84. Vanishment of belly buttons? Really? It’s just too hard to believe that our society is looking down upon something that makes us human. It connects back to our roots, or birth, and it is a symbol that we are connected to our parents. So now what, we’re supposed to be born without an umbilical cord? It does not make any sense how a belly button is compared to a blemish. Do people in real life actually get their belly buttons removed? It’s just so hard for me to comprehend this phenomena. How can something so natural be looked as ugly? It’s impossible for people to actually fix their bodies to their upmost mentality of what is beautiful. I do not even think it makes sense for anyone to replace a belly button. I’m just in awe…honestly.

    Comment by Sharona M — May 30, 2012 @ 10:56 pm

  85. So i actually remember this issue of maxim and looked at her picture and noticed her bellybutton, or actually lack of bellybutton. I thought at first maybe that’s just what her belly button looks like so i went online to see other pics of hers from the spread and saw that no her belly button is not naturally like that. This was actually the strangest thing. I get altering photos to clear up people skins or clear up cellulite but altering or basically removing a belly button?? everyone has a belly button and they all practically look the same. This was just completely strange.

    Comment by Samina Abgin — October 17, 2012 @ 2:33 pm

  86. The absence of the belly button only reinforces how unrealistic these images are. It seems to me that as long as a woman’s vagina and breasts are still intact, they meet mainstream cultural standards and are deemed “acceptable”.

    Comment by PanteaP — November 4, 2012 @ 9:35 am

  87. I am absolutely shocked to find that bellybuttons are starting to be airbrushed and photoshopped as well! I have never heard of such thing and I think that it is ridiculous. I feel that it is as if these types of ads are trying to make women feel worse about themselves. I mean, come on. A bellybutton really needs to be photoshopped off of a women’s body?! It is completely insane and I think that by doing this, it only makes the photos seem unrealistic, giving viewers negative thoughts. I honestly think that they have gone too far and that there is nothing else left for them to photo shop next. I wouldn’t be surprised if they started photo shopping nails & toe nails. I am very shocked by this and I think that it is giving out a negative influence to many viewers.

    Comment by Sheerly A — November 8, 2012 @ 2:02 pm

  88. Its just comical reading about some of the things photographers of magazines do to make the women in the magazines look good.I don’t know how the hell would airbrushing a girls bellybutton make them look more attractive.Most of the features these photographers brush off aren’t even extremely ugly in the first place.They need to realize with all the Photoshop they are doing,they are just portraying a fake woman.

    Comment by Saman M. — November 10, 2012 @ 6:16 pm

  89. When i first noticed that this women had her belly buton airbrushed off i was seriously shocked and creeped out. Im not sure why and dont know why big fashion industries would inforce photo editors to remove belly buttons off of their modeled women. Because that is just wrong and creepy and seriously not attractive or appealing to me or society. Big fashion industries really need to move away from such a false perception of what women should look like because things are just really get out of hand. Like really whats next? ears?

    Comment by Danny — November 12, 2012 @ 11:45 am

  90. When i first noticed that this women had her belly buton airbrushed off i was seriously shocked and creeped out. Im not sure why and dont know why big fashion industries would inforce photo editors to remove belly buttons off of their modeled women. Because that is just wrong and creepy and seriously not attractive or appealing to me or society. Big fashion industries really need to move away from such a false perception of what women should look like because things are just really get out of hand. Like really whats next to be edited out? ears?

    Comment by Danny S — November 12, 2012 @ 12:46 pm

  91. I was never aware that magazine publishers could do such ridiculous things, such as airbrushing or even removing someone’s bellybutton, such as Lindsay Lohan’s photo. I don’t even understand what the point of doing that is. To enhance beauty? I also believe that it does not make any sense that models waste so much money on hair stylists and makeup artists when their pictures are going to ultimately be photoshopped regardless. Before we know it, our faces will be removed! The magazine corporations are taking things way too far, creating the most unrealistic images for young viewers.

    Comment by NatashaN — November 25, 2012 @ 9:08 pm

  92. I find it absolutely ridiculous that something as little and as natural as a belly button is seen as unattractive and I am appalled that it would be erased all together in an ad. Every human has a belly button and my erasing one’s belly button in an ad, the media is basically telling people that they need to be un-human to be beautiful. When advertisements are using photoshop to remove even bellybuttons, it is no wonder that so many girls have body dysmorphia and other disorders.

    Comment by Jasmin B — November 28, 2012 @ 6:27 pm

  93. I find it very devastating that photographers and magazines have taken Photoshopping to this much of an extreme. A bellybutton is something every woman is born with and its seems so extreme to have to photoshop that out so that the woman can appear to look “prettier. Because magazines and advertisements are featuring such images, girls see this as the norm and what is acceptable. In effect, girls have a body image that is not healthy and they often have body dysmorphia and a develop a very low self-esteem that can be extremely detrimental.

    Comment by Angella F — December 2, 2012 @ 10:18 pm

  94. What is happening in our society? It seems like natural is not acceptable anymore. Why leave anything natural when you could retouch it digitally? Is this a trend that is following with our technological advances rather from nature towards the digital world? Considering the symbolic implications of erasing or altering the belly button is toying with life itself. It is through the umbilical cord that the pregnant mother has nourished her baby within her body and to erase that origin seems like a total disconnection from life. Will embracing the digital world take us farther away from our natural beings? I cannot help but think about the fate of humanity from the movie Walle. Also, are male models’ belly buttons as focused on as females? Our society sometimes values such strange things and changes in such strange ways that I cannot wait to see what is next either. 

    Comment by Sharon K. — December 3, 2012 @ 6:21 am

  95. It seems that their will always be something wrong with the womens body. I am so upset with the way people think about what classifies women to be “perfect”. the belly button is the source of life and the main connection between and mother and her infant. i agree hundred percent with this article. What person is so beautiful to set the standards.

    Comment by Kevin Y — December 3, 2012 @ 8:05 pm

  96. Having media, as our number one agent of socialization is scary since we know how much Photoshop is done to all ads. This new method of cultivation has allowed for an upsurge of this unreal ideal of feminine beauty. Women compare themselves to such images that are not real yet we lack understanding and keep pushing our self-esteem lower and lower since we are not able to attain this beauty ads depict. These Photoshop ads are very powerful since they shape the way we view our world. It also males since they try to woo a women such as those in the ads just to come home with someone with many ‘flaws’ leaving their desire to be with a women in disappointment.

    Comment by ElizabethR — December 3, 2012 @ 8:23 pm

  97. Yes, lets just erase one of the main reason why we are even alive. The bellybutton, also known as our navel, is the site of attachment of the umbilical cord, what connects the baby to the mother, serves as what nourishes the baby in the womb. How can society be so cruel and disrespectful to think that it is okay to casually remove this because they feel its not okay. What do they want to remove next our eyes?! because they think we just don’t need them. that statement might be too drastic but that’s what they are doing by removing the bellybutton!

    Comment by NedaM — December 3, 2012 @ 9:03 pm

  98. I just read the armpit article right before, and I thought that was bizarre and then I read this. After reading the last sentence I wondered why do they pay all these people when they end up photo shopping it anyway. They don’t need any of the people they have, everything is digital. Sooner or later everything is going to be digital and the women won’t even be needed.

    Comment by Sean A. — December 5, 2012 @ 3:12 pm

  99. Again, what!? Your belly button is not good enough to be on your own body! I wonder if the models question the people behind the scenes about their body parts. I have never personally seen any issue where the model’s belly button is missing but would I really notice? I see the model as perfect as probably wouldn’t even raise an eyebrow, now that scares me. How can the woman’s body be so brutally discriminated against. It’s dreadful that beauty has actually become unattainable.

    Comment by Anhjia L — December 5, 2012 @ 4:52 pm

  100. After reading the article and doing my own research, I have come to the conclusion that
    “J Woww” has had some sort of plastic surgery involving the abdominal area. Usually having surgery in the abdominal area creates your belly button to look stretched to where you can barley see it and if like you have nothing there. I personally dont think this photo was photo shopped and focussed on the belly button.

    Comment by Jimmy S — December 5, 2012 @ 7:37 pm

  101. It really upsets me to see how the media is always trying to hide people’s flaws and imperfections, but this, I believe is hardly an imperfection. Belly buttons should not be classified as a bodily flaw. By the media showing that it in fact is, they actually send the message to people that, that part of the body should not be shown and is in fact something they should be embarrassed and feel ashamed of. Today, with the mass media constantly setting the bar higher of what the ideal woman is suppose to look like it is scary to think of what kind of photoshopping of images is to come in the future. If now such small and barely noticeable areas of the body, such as, armpits and bellybuttons are being removed from photos.

    Comment by NatalieA — December 5, 2012 @ 8:51 pm

  102. I don’t understand why something like the bellybutton has to be airbrushed and taken away from the women’s body image. Looking at a photograph of a woman with no bellybutton can actually look very bizzarre. It’s very odd that something like the bellybutton can even reach to the point of unattractiveness. It’s very sad to see that the media and photographers take upon this act to remove a woman’s bellybutton for an ad or a picture in a magazine. We don’t see true beauty by removing a body part such as the belly button. Now this can cause girls and women to become self-conscious about it, which is totally not necessary.

    Comment by Shahriar M. — December 6, 2012 @ 12:53 am

  103. I really agree with post. Why bother paying photographers, celebrities, and etc. when nothing is good enough for them. At the end we know that whatever shows as imperfect, the computer will fix it all. Now days photo shop is so common, that it will be a shock if someone does not use it. It is like you can “buy” photo shop from anywhere, it is easy access. To be airbrushing is just another crazy idea of theirs. Look what it has come down to that even belly buttons have to be perfect and if they are not they will be airbrushed. It is just a shame that a persons picture cannot be put into a magazine unless it fits the “perfect” category. It must be that every little “imperfect” part of the body is either airbrushed or is photo shopped.

    Comment by Daniella L — January 27, 2013 @ 2:51 pm

  104. I am seriously shocked that photographers will remove a bellybutton, such a small but vital part of a humans body. I really don’t see a point of having photo shoots that consist of makeup artists, hair artists, expensive camera crews and people to help out with the photo shoot when in the end, photographers and editors will make the client look like what they want and change so much of the natural client that they’re not even their real selves. I think its so unnecessary and pointless to remove a bellybutton, I mean I understand to remove blemishes, cellulite for the skin but a bellybutton? really? I don’t see how a bellybutton is so unattractive that it has to be airbrushed away.

    Comment by Shannon Ha — January 29, 2013 @ 11:59 am

  105. Now they are attacking bellybuttons? What is so wrong with having a bellybutton? Is it supposed to be attractive? No, it’s not supposed to be. The main purpose was to help us stay alive in our mother’s womb. People need to stop worrying about the superficial things. Magazines will never show how real women are. They just want us to feel sorry for ourselves so they can sell their products. They don’t care how we look nor about our personalities. All they care about is making us hate ourselves/bodies so they can become richer while we feel miserable about ourselves. Beauty is just psychological. If you feel beautiful, you are beautiful. If you don’t, then you need to learn how to love yourself.

    Comment by Judith S — February 3, 2013 @ 6:04 pm

  106. It is evident that Maxim has photoshopped J-WOWW’s body. Her belly button barely shows, which is obvious that the magazine editors have air brushed it, in order to make it more faint and unnoticeable. Personally, I do not see the need in making a photograph look extremely fake, especially when it comes down to a human beings body. Magazine editors improve pictures the way they, themselves would like to see the actors. What this does is make young woman feel like they are not acceptable in society because of the way they look which does not match the way an actor/actress on the cover of a magazine appears.

    Comment by Yasmin F — February 5, 2013 @ 2:00 pm

  107. So at first I thought the whole armpit thing was too extreme…but then again I was wrong. One should never underestimate the power of media to bring something new to the table everyday! As if the masking of the armpit wasn’t enough, (which it clearly wasn’t), the new target area has become the belly button. I’m sorry but a woman with no bellybutton…that’s a little scary. That isn’t even possible unless all of these models are aliens. As another commentator touched on earlier, the belly button is the connection of a child to the mother, signifying life. All of a sudden, the media decides to step in and rules out the belly button from being shown in pictures? Day after day, these images of females in the media are becoming more and more unrealistic but the unfortunate part is that it actually effects many women out there. I find that very unfortunate and believe that the media should stop altering peoples bodies because one day I’m sure that no one will remember what a ‘real’ body is supposed to look like.

    Comment by Jonathan M — February 5, 2013 @ 7:35 pm

  108. I think that this article is right and marketers are quite stupid. They target men with these advertisements and I personally think men will like to see woman that they will find in the real world and not woman with fake bellybuttons, so stop giving a false look at a lady’s body, men like real woman with real belly buttons.

    Comment by Ashley H. — February 7, 2013 @ 1:10 am

  109. I cannot agree more! Why do celebrities suppose to be photoshopped in every picture? Lets be real now—nobody ever looks like that naturally or will ever look like that. Its sad that makeup artists, hair artists, and editors are getting paid for their when they have to be touched up to an extreme. I’m sorry but J-Wow does not look like that. And where in the world is her belly button? I also don’t understand why that has to be photo edited as well. Its disgusting to me that they would remove her belly button. Is she fat or something? It surprises me that only females are being targeted. Rarely do we ever see a male being bashed on. We might as well just pay a photographer and an editor to photoshop photos. Its not like the celebrities showing natural beauty anyways. I believe a belly button is very significant and defines who you are. Its a part of your body and removing it looks disgusting and sounds painful.

    Comment by Jnaziri — April 1, 2013 @ 9:17 am

  110. To edit a photo in a means to shrink or completely remove the belly button provides a method to remove any connection to motherhood and the idea that we all came from women. Our belly buttons were once connected via an umbilical cord to our mothers and we relied upon this cord for our nourishment from her body. However, by removing this belly button, one removes any connection to this idea; the idea that we all once relied on women and to an extent still do. The deletion of such a vital bodily tissue inherently spawns the question of whether birth is considered beautiful or a task to go through in order to provided babies for the patriarchal society. This article focuses on an issue of Maxim featuring “J-WOWW” in which she is biting her finger while being drenched in water wearing a red bikini. These are provocative images in a manner to get more male readers, and what best way to distance themselves from their females counterparts then to view them as not human. They are not human in a sense that they are edited in an effort to create the ideal women without flaws, including the removal of the belly button. Again, the removal of the belly button seems to be an effort to remove any thoughts of motherhood from a woman that a male happens to be fantasizing about. There seems to be nothing erotic to the majority of the male population of women who are already carrying the child of another man, as it becomes a power struggle between males to control the mother.

    Comment by Darien a. — April 8, 2013 @ 11:49 am

  111. I find this entire concept shocking and in actually disgusting – the media are treating women more-and-more like objects, and popular magazines in particular seem to believe they can edit and air-brush images of women in any way that they want in order to increase sales. They are all transforming women into artificial stereotypes. Now, they are sending the message that not having a belly button is what women should want, and of course making us ‘normal’ all feel inadequate by having one! This is just another media tactic that is going to cause women to feel ashamed about their bodies – this time because of the size of their belly buttons.

    Comment by Lois P — May 6, 2013 @ 6:15 pm

  112. Reading this article really made me angry and upset; I mean who air brushes a belly button? What’s so sexy or hot about that? Its bother me that these photographers and editors think that the readers care so much about these things. I feel as if there will always be a flaw in a women’s body and these magazines will always try to blemish it and not make normal people realize it. The next thing we know there will be a nude picture of a women with her boobs hanging out without a nipple showing (unless there are already pictures life that). It’s just crazy and disturbing to look at pictures like this, even the picture of Jwow. The belly button is such an important part of the human’s body and we need to appreciate it.

    Comment by Jasmin H — May 9, 2013 @ 12:11 pm

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  115. This picture of JWOWW isn’t a work of art, but rather a work of dehumanization and degradation of women as a whole. It makes me so sad knowing that celebrities and models go through these photoshop events and are the representations of ideal beauty in our culture. Not only is her bellybutton airbrushed and invisible in the picture, but the whole picture is drawn to her bikini top which seems to small for her plastic boobs. it is so sad for images like these to be mundane everyday images we are used to. Whoever knew that a bellybutton was not sexy enough to be widely published in magazines. Perhaps airbrushing off bellybuttons the next big thing?

    Comment by RoxanaGM — May 24, 2013 @ 7:27 am

  116. I cannot believe that we have nothing left to fix about the female body that we have resorted to editing their belly buttons!! What I don’t understand is since when were belly buttons a flaw? This scares me, because if the media has gone so far as to remove women’s belly buttons, something everyone has, what else can they edit? Given that belly buttons are now considered to be flaws, what’s going to be the new gimmick or procedure to fix this flaw? It all seems to be a never-ending circle, in which women’s bodies will never be good enough. This is all because media will always find a way to modify and enhance women’s bodies, setting the standards higher and even less attainable.

    Comment by Brenda S. — May 28, 2013 @ 9:46 pm

  117. The first thing i said to this was WOW. Belly button missing? that doesnt even make sense why would companies try to delete the belly button off women? It does them no harm and no good. The media has had so much influence on America and our society that everything is being hidden.From belly buttons to scars to scratches to belly fat and everything in between is going missing in photoshopped images. One should be happy with his self or herself and let it go, dont try to be someone you are not, it will make you look bad and make them look bad.

    Comment by Shahien Hendizadeh — May 29, 2013 @ 11:21 pm

  118. This is seriously getting utterly ridiculous. The armpit was a flaw, and now the belly button? Soon every part of the body will be considered a flaw — oh wait, it already is. You see some movies depict the world as some dystopia, and it seems completely unreal. Unfortunately, it seems as though parts of that dystopia may in fact become a reality if we keep going this route.

    Comment by Cristine B — May 29, 2013 @ 11:44 pm

  119. I do not really see why marketers feel the need to keep on constantly airbrushing things out of the woman’s body’s on pictures. I think that there is no other sexier part of a women’s body then the bellybutton. Bellybuttons come in all sizes and shapes. Women need their bellybutton to produce babies. I don’t understand why in GQ they put Lindsay Lohan’s bellybutton up where it was not supposed to be and in another photo of her took her bellybutton off. Maybe they are trying to make her look like a little girl. I would never want to take my bellybutton away. It’s part of my body, and I don’t know who would ever want to take there bellybutton away.

    Comment by M.D. — July 15, 2013 @ 8:09 pm

  120. Ears, that is what is next. Ears. Not that you ever see ears either.
    Really though, whats wrong with a bellybutton. They’re creating a whole new monster that young girls and women have to tackle. Creating a 2.0 version of what we have been made to believe was perfect. Perfect skin, long hair, delicate hands, and NOW, NOW WE HAVE BELLYBUTTONS TO WORRY ABOUT.

    Comment by Margarita H. — July 24, 2013 @ 7:31 pm

  121. Is the belly button really that ugly? I love my belly button! I would never imagine that the belly button would be a target for photoshop. This photo of JWOWW is freaky. Does anyone remember the show Kyle XY? The guy didn’t have a belly button and that was one of the things that would give away the fact that he wasn’t human. I can understand why armpits are a target of photoshop but I do not understand the purpose of moving the location or completely erasing a belly button. I don’t know how JWOWW and Lindsay Lohan allowed those pictures to be published; they just look really strange and abnormal. And for the last two sentences in this post about computer generated images; I’m curious too. It’s bound to happen sooner or later.

    Comment by CrystalY — July 24, 2013 @ 11:48 pm

  122. I used to work at a post-marketing house for film and television posters and outdoor advertising. We most notably worked on the horrifying and much-scrutinized one-sheets that came out for Angelina Jolie’s “Salt”. I remember listening to our account exec discuss Angelina’s face with our art director, consulting him on the width of her nose. “Smaller…smaller still.” I remembered thinking, “Is her nose not already small enough?” I can only envision that this is what happened here…”Her belly button is too big. Smaller. No, smaller still.” Smaller and smaller until all photos have become completely devoid of any sense of realism. Photoshop has turned human bodies into a thing of fiction. What is truly terrifying is that they honestly believe this is what looks “good”. Before you know it, we’re all going to end up walking around in silicone avatars like that one shitty Bruce Willis movie just to keep our sanity afloat.

    Comment by SarahC — July 25, 2013 @ 2:03 am

  123. I blame advertisement for a lot of things and this is one! I don’t think something so small as your belly button have to be photo shop. People portray a lot of false images. I feel if you have to photo shot things your not happy with yourself nor are you happy with your body. People follow a lot of different things that they do on TV and advertisement its like a cycle once one do it all do it then before you know it its becomes a trend. In that case that’s why I blame the media for so much cause if half of the things they do wasn’t published this world will be totally different. We living in a world where over half of them women body image isn’t real and if people see one person do something everyone does it.

    Comment by Alexis C — July 25, 2013 @ 7:57 am

  124. To be brutally honest, moments ago I read the article about magazines and advertisers ousting “armpits” on female models and was skeptical about the writer’s argument. However, as soon as I read through this current piece and examined the photo, I immediately lost my sketpicism and instead am in great disbelief. Personally, I have noticed common technological alterations of women in media; although, I have seldom seen something as absurd as distorting an armpit or belly button. I thought the armpit article was ridiculous over-analyzing (pardon my disagreement), but I was proven wrong as soon as I read this. It is true, the content we are exposed to everyday seems so commonstate and ridiculous that we pay it no mind while not realizing that we are still subconsciously affected by them. These images provide us a foundation of standards in which we unconsciously uphold against other women (and men too). Body image is a sensitive issue and should be acted upon as such. I agree with many of the comments above. Today, it is an armpit or belly button; tomorrow, we might only have pictures of boobs or an ass on a magazine cover. And at the rate we’re going with many individuals lacking media literacy (such as us before witnessing these issues) – even the most sexualized and objectified media content will have a noticable effect on our society.

    Comment by Michael A. — November 7, 2013 @ 9:38 pm

  125. Its amazing that magazines do not get more backlash for the images that they print. I had no idea that there was such high expectations when it comes to belly buttons. It takes up such a small portion of our bodies and now it’s considered a blemish like armpits or cellulite. Our society places to high of a value on physical appearance creating body image issues and a lasting false perception of what beauty really is.

    Comment by ChristinaB — November 20, 2013 @ 11:54 am

  126. Seems as though women are slowly and continuously being turned into cartoon characters. The image of real beauty is becoming almost impossible to obtain. What makes matters worse is that women are not standing up. We are allowing that to happen. The celebrities in these pictures should be the first to set their foot down and say enough with the photo shop and editing and women like us should stop buying these magazines. Only when we set our foot down is that the editing of the pictures will stop being so drastic.

    Comment by Leslie S — November 25, 2013 @ 12:02 pm

  127. Wow. This is hilarious. When I read the title of this post, I thought it would be a discussion about “inny” bellybuttons verses “outy” belly buttons. I did not think the entity of the belly button would be erased all together. This goes to show just how ridiculous the ideal image of beauty as constructed by today’s media is. If this is the route they’re going down, the next thing that’ll be erased are feet or elbows. This is a human body being taken into re-construction. Women are not old electronic models. You can’t simply introduce the new and improved Woman Model Figure 5s by Macin-media. This is the work of nature. Leave it alone

    Comment by Jacqueline C — December 1, 2013 @ 12:29 pm

  128. I totally agree with Jacqueline’s post above me ^. Before even reading this, I read the title and thought to myself, “Oh, okay it’s going to be an article discussing the different between an “inny” or an “outy” bellybutton.” I guess not. I found this article to be quite disgusting, in fact. Jenni repeatedly has mentioned her numerous procedures she has had on her body. The reason why her belly button looks as if it has been shaved off is because of her tummy-tuck procedure. When they stretch the stomach to cut off all the excess fat, the belly button, too, stretches and is no longer in the same spot. Therefore, surgeons need to shape out a circle in their stomach. As for photoshopping belly buttons in magazines, etc., I’m not even surprised at this point. After watching the Dove photoshopping clip in class, I am now fully aware that everything in magazines, billboards, commercials, etc, is fake to the point where they can now take four different women and make a whole new person.

    Comment by Michelle Omidi — May 14, 2014 @ 11:27 am

  129. Since when is it attractive to not have a belly button. This is ridiculous. As if the editing of the thighs, waist, and face wasn’t enough, now they are editing out the belly button. It’s as if they want to take everything away from women. They keep subtracting from us more and more. Soon magazines pages will have bodies with no faces but just breasts and an ass. There aren’t a lot of times where I cam across a picture where a woman was missing her belly button, however, when flipping through a magazine I find that belly buttons have been edited to be higher on the body. It’s getting to the point where I’ve seen belly buttons in the middle of the torso. I mean common! When will this stop? Media literacy is a big factor in helping this stop. When having people notice things like this, it brings a lot more attention to it. Hopefully we can make it stop before they start editing out our faces, becuase they are “blemishes.” After looking at this picture for a second time, I realized how scary this picture was. JWOWW looks like an alien. Humans have belly buttons! The editors have lost their minds. They have in no way made her more attractive but instead made her look like she’s from another planet.

    Comment by Jasmin Lavi — May 14, 2014 @ 6:12 pm

  130. I’m a little confused as to why a bellybutton must be photoshopped out of a picture. A bellybutton, a part of a person’s body that was once connected to his or her mother, is a symbol of life. It is something natural. By erasing this significant feature off an individual, photo editors take possession of a real person and warp him or her into something else. They take away what identified the person in the image as a natural human being.
    After reading this article, I am actually quite interested in speaking with someone in the photoshop industry. I never thought a bellybutton could be offensive or ugly, and I want to understand when and how this stigma against bellybuttons originated.

    Comment by Jessica B. — May 15, 2014 @ 2:51 pm

  131. Every thing must be “fixed,” but what is wrong with in the first place? Well, let’s add it all to the list! The media has focused on our waist, hips, legs, nose, armpits and now bellybutton. I agree with the previous comment that editing photos destruct the real, natural person. There is nothing natural, or even possible, about not having a bellybutton and there is definitely nothing natural about these standards we are exposed to every day.

    Comment by Vanessa R. — May 26, 2014 @ 1:27 am

  132. As other comments have stated above when I read the title of the article what first few thought that came to mind is the article would either talk about inny or outy bellybuttons or bellybutton piercings. Never did I think they would talk about photoshopping a bellybutton off of someone or moving it around. I am not surprised that they would do something like this because all the editing that already affects the picture. But to completely edit a bellybutton out is ridiculous because since when do models let alone people not have a bellybutton. It would be very strange to find someone who didn’t have one. Also I didn’t know that people had issues with bellybuttons to be a criticism of beauty. Looking at the photo and just thinking of someone who didn’t have a bellybutton is unnatural.

    Comment by Pablo D — May 27, 2014 @ 2:40 pm

  133. This is just absolutely crazy! I had no idea people edited their belly buttons. Reading this article showed me that media has gone way too far, so far that women consider their belly button as a flaw. Personally, belly buttons don’t have flaws. This is just sad. I remember one point in my life I compared myself so much to the girls on magazine covers, and I just tried so hard to have what they have and it wouldn’t happen, so I realized that this is how I am and I should accept it. Honestly, this seems to be a never ending cycle. Next thing you know, people are editing the shape of their fingernails.

    Comment by Hasti N — May 28, 2014 @ 10:29 pm

  134. I don’t know what the point of removing a model’s belly button through Photoshop is because I wouldn’t think belly buttons have any flaws. But since it is happening, I would say that this is a ridiculous move because I don’t see the point unless it is really dirty or disturbing-looking over there. If you really have to make such changes on a model to make her not even look human, then there is nothing to see over there and you can forget about your whole profession Mr. photographer. If anything, belly buttons in a way enforce the model’s sexiness, especially if it has piercings then that’s part of the fashion. If we take away the belly button, it doesn’t really take away from the model, but it takes away from the credibility of the body image of women in society in general- add it to the “flaw list” that all women “must” pay attention to or be concerned about….
    A missing belly button cannot and should not be attributed to any model other than Karolina Kurkova- she had an operation has an infant that made her belly button look almost invisible.

    Comment by Tamir M. — May 31, 2014 @ 11:55 pm

  135. It’s almost funny that belly buttons are becoming an issue. I’ve always thought belly buttons were pretty cool, and never had an issue with mine. I have an inverted belly button, and always accepted it for what it was…until I got my belly button pierced. I was so excited to get my belly button pierced, because I thought why not? I have a tiny hole in the middle of my belly and it could use some bling! So, I went to get it pierced, and the lady who pierced it made me feel totally self conscious about the way my belly button looked. She told me that my belly button drooped a little on one side. I had never noticed that before, because who looks at their belly button and the way it droops? After that, I became very critical of it, and every time I look at my belly button, the only thing I notice is the droop. I feel so stupid about caring about something as little as my belly button. We would look absolutely freakish if we had no belly buttons, so I am happy about my droopy belly button, thanks to this article.

    Comment by Elena V. — June 2, 2014 @ 6:53 pm

  136. As I’ve said before,corporate clothing companies will go to the extremes to make maximum profit off of their products. This is just another example of that, where the companies digitally alter the photos so that the model or celebrity in the photo doesn’t have any flaws, to basically be perfect. This tends to have an affect on people in our society, especially our women. They see these ads and subconsciously think that they have to have these types of qualities that these models and celebrities have or else they will either ridiculed or punished by our society. In turn, woman as well go to extremes to copy what these models. Some women will even go as far as starving themselves, or forcing themselves to throw up so that they can have the extremely thin bodies that these advertise portray.Consequently, woman sometimes die from these extreme remedies to become thin, and that has become a problem in our society.

    Comment by Shahab Naimi — June 2, 2014 @ 11:11 pm

  137. It seems the whole media industry has gone to the extreme by dehumanizing the very people that helped build it to what it is today. The average human helped build the industry it is now and yet it seems we’re are further straying from what we originally were, according to society’s standards of course. No longer is a much more fuller form seen attractive or the epitome of beauty as portrayed by sex symbol, Marilyn Monroe; instead a fictitious and impossible appearance of a woman is held up on a pedestal. Photoshopping belly buttons out, that of which every human has through birth much like our armpits, is completing dehumanizing us. Why take away things that make us human?

    Comment by Christopher Cruz — July 24, 2014 @ 1:34 pm

  138. What the point of being a celebrity and going to a photo shoot if they are just going to Photoshop everything about you. They should just recreate your face using Photoshop. These images are becoming so unreal that it amazes me that they don’t just stop using modes all together. They should just use CGI to put a fake woman in a magazine. At least they won’t have to pay models. What message are we sending to young women and little girls? They shouldn’t aspire to become something that even exists.

    Comment by adrianna heads — July 30, 2014 @ 12:24 pm

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