You may have read the article posted earlier today written by my lovely writer Laura Wythe regarding the ‘real life Barbie’s’, girls who digitally manipulate themselves to resemble ‘human dolls’. Dakota Rose in particular has proven to be very popular with the Japanese, due to her huge eyes and doll like features – which reflect their love of anime. After reading an article last night about this worldwide ‘doll’ craze, I have been researching Dakota Rose and her sister religiously ever since as I find it so fascinating that someone would go to the extent of digitally manipulating themselves so that they resemble what is a very unnatural and unattainable ideal.
Looking back at photographs of Dakota Rose as a younger girl (where she went by another name), you can see that she has always been very naturally pretty but the eyes she displays in many of her videos and photographs currently are very different to original photos. She is obviously very popular with fans worldwide (no guesses why) but I do find it so interesting as to why a young girl would digitally manipulate herself in order to create a false, unnaturally achievable online persona.
Many online blogs have criticised Dakota’s (or Kotakoti’s) editing techniques, as they claim her lips, eyes and nose change shape regularly throughout her images and videos. It has also been stated that her natural eye colour is brown and she therefore uses circle contact lenses to enhance her eyes, change the colour and make them appear bigger. She also is said to have made her eyes much larger and reduce the size of her chin.
However, it might surprise you to know that she is actually listed as a model in Japan, where her natural eye colour is ‘blue’ and her polaroid suggests that her photoshopping is very minimal and those huge eyes are in fact her own! You can take a look for yourself at http://www.bravomodels.net/#women/intown.
Whilst I don’t think Kotakoti has done anything particularly offensive in manipulating her image, as let’s be honest – we’ve all edited/picked and chosen photographs which highlight our best features. She obviously isn’t unattractive and simply uses photo shop to re-define her eyes and jawline. Some might argue that she may feel pressured in a society which is so image conscious, whilst others might say it’s girls like her that spiral such an image conscious generation. Personally, I just think it’s fascinating!
In a (sort of) experiment I decided to see how I would look should I want to digitally manipulate myself into a ‘human barbie’. I’m no photo shopping expert by all means and the final result certainly looks far from natural, however I thought it would be an interesting way to display how much a photo can change using digital manipulation despite the fact it is completely unattainable.
To achieve this, I:
– Reshaped the face
– Smoothed skin
– Widened and reshaped eyes
– Thinned and re structured nose
– Warped Jaw line
– Blurred skintone
– Smooth Blemishes
What do you think? Is it right to lie to create an online persona. Do you enjoy Dakota’s blogs?
