translating my brain

One phrase the French have that I love is the idiomatic phrase "ce n'est pas toujours évident." It sort of means "it's not always as easy as one might think," but the French sprinkle it liberally throughout conversation in a way that works in the privacy of my own brain, too. I use it a lot in my internal dialogue, but I don't usually say it out loud, because it doesn't translate to anything.

But there's something so gracious about it. Sure, it can be used ironically or with sarcasm, but mostly it's like an acceptance of limitation: it's okay if you didn't get that, at first, it's not as easy as it might look. Or, there's time to redo it, we all did it wrong, when we were starting out.

It's neutral, on its own. It reserves judgement. It's a nice way of acknowledging something, and then moving on.

C'est pas toujours évident, quoi. It's a phrase that carries its accompanying shrug, right along with it.

Reading ads, again

lxbean made a point in my last "Visual Literacy" post, in a comment she said "maybe we're getting to a point where we can be liberated from the tyranny of these photos as ideal. ...Maybe if we got there, we could just say "ooh, pretty [if unrealistic] picture!" Kind of like we might say about a picture of a unicorn: pretty -- not real, but pretty."

She was referencing another blog entry (over here: http://twobodysolution.wordpress.com/2009/10/18/the-emaciation-proclamation/#more-370)...and I think she and Professor Bean are both right. In fact, it's exactly how I read fashion magazines: as cool illustrations, having little to do with my life or the reality I live in. It's also why I advocate blogs like "Photoshop Disasters" and why I think everyone should know the boundaries of what photo editing software can do--so that everybody can appreciate the pretty unicorns, and stop looking around for horned ponies, or even wasting their time saving up hard-earned money for one of their own.

To me, most photos I see in fashion mags look rather like the old Steve Madden ads:



Remember those? They're creepy, because you know they're stretched and distorted but they're still humanoid, and even cute. But you'd never, ever say "Oh, I think I'll diet until my legs look like that!" Would you? It'd be preposterous.

But these ads are different from others only because Madden's ad company was cheeky in the extreme. They didn't use any special tools or techniques, just the same ones we've been looking at for decades, now. But they stretched it far enough that we didn't have to be visually savvy to see through it.

( More distorted pictures here, cut for size and quantity. )