Photoshop and Body Shaming

I'm a huge Margaret Atwood fan and read the Handmaid's Tale, a science fiction novel about a dystopian totalitarian society, years ago. I've been a fan of the Hulu series too. I recently watched the documentary about Atwood, "Margaret Atwood: A Word after a Word after a Word is Power," and was fascinated when she talked about how much of the material for her 1985 novel was based on true events. With that in mind, it's not a huge leap to imagine the recent New York Times story about altered yearbook photos at Bartram Trail High School in St. Johns County, Fla as more real-life material.In the photo above, someone with Photoshop (or a similar image editing program) added a black bar to the young woman's chest to block her cleavage. There are multiple examples in the yearbook where this was done—without the permission or knowledge of the students. They only found out when they opened the yearbook. Edits were only done on images of female students, no male student photos were edited. Students said their first reaction was fury, then they felt sexualized and exposed.Image manipulation is ubiquitous these days. Most of us assume retouching is used for advertising along with a plethora of other uses. Its use for body shaming is not surprising, but definitely alarming, and perhaps we should view it as a huge red flag.Sources:https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/23/us/yearbook-photos-st-johns-girls-altering.html?referringSource=articleSharehttps://www.insider.com/handmaids-tale-based-on-real-world-origins-history-events-2019-8#:~:text=%22The%20Handmaid's%20Tale%22%20may%20be,in%20religious%20and%20political%20history.&text=Its%20real%2Dlife%20origins%20are,30%20years%20after%20its%20publication.