Famous pictures photoshopped to today’s beauty standards

As a photo editor at TakePart, Lauren Wade is well used to photoshopping pictures to hide imperfections. In fact, the editor says that even an image considered to look “natural” is anything but.

While us beautiful women come in all shapes and sizes, today’s ideal beauty is narrowed down to a few who are considered perfect.

Comparing today’s beauty standards to what was considered beautiful back in the day of Botticelli and Jean Auguste Dominique, Lauren says: “Throughout art history, painters from Titian to Rubens to Gauguin found beauty in the bodies of women who would never fit into a size 0.” So, she  decided to see exactly what famous paintings would look like if they were photoshopped in line with today’s beauty standards.

Describing her project, Lauren says: “We’ve taken a digital liquefy brush to the painstakingly layered oils of some of the most celebrated paintings of the female form, nipping and tucking at will. There may be something sacrilegious in that, but the same could be said for our contemporary ideas of beauty.”

The images are truly captivating and while it has opened our eyes to the huge change in what is considered beautiful, Lauren has also given us all a lesson in art history.