| Oh, I just love that whole high-def TV thing. I just knew, as I started seeing more and more places where HDTV popped up, that there would be those in the TV industry who would be getting skittish. The Baltimore Sun explores the issue, that a transition to digital is going to change the face of television, quite literally.
You see, high-definition – with its laser-sharp picture that brings a myriad details out of the woodwork, so to speak – alters reality. Their reality. Let’s just say that the makeup chair is becoming a little more of a hotseat, in an effort to push back that fabulous advance in technology. Whereas once the camera forgave a few certain things, it now beams them forward to viewers as if they were sitting across the table. Shining a spotlight.
You mean God gave news anchors wrinkles, zits and stray hairs, too? Apparently so! And hey, we’re just now learning this! (Does that also mean those photos in Playboy are airbrushed! You know, gentlemen, it’s entirely possible! It’s entirely possible that people don’t actually, naturally, look like that!)
But really, the more we think about this, the more we have to point the finger right back on ourselves. We are the ones, after all, who worship perfection. We are the ones, particularly in the American culture, who find it somehow disturbing to see an actor on television who is overweight. Who looks more like us. We want to believe in perfection.
So what those TV personalities are striving for, in the makeup chair, as they try to cover it all up and chemically airbrush it all away, is to please us, not really themselves.
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