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"  Photo: Do The Hot Pants Last week, Dana Suchow, the blogger behind fashion site Do The Hot Pants, made headlines when she revealed the unretouched versions of photos she&amp;#039;s posted of herself on her blog. Edited to make her body look slightly thinner and her skin clearer, the images showed what she thought was the more perfect version of herself that people wanted to see. Below, Suchow explains why she made the decision to &amp;quot;come clean&amp;quot; about Photoshop, how her blog post has been received, and what her hopes are moving forward. I Photoshopped the images in the first place because that&amp;#039;s what you do\u2014that&amp;#039;s what bloggers do; that&amp;#039;s what fashion does. When I first started the blog, I thought, &amp;#039;I want to make so much money, I&amp;#039;m going to become a famous fashion blogger, I&amp;#039;m going to go to all the fashion weeks.&amp;#039; Now that&amp;#039;s not what I want to do.  But no one&amp;#039;s going to want to advertise on a girl who has acne, or a fupa. That&amp;#039;s not the ideal body. So [I thought] unless I have an ideal body, my blog is not going to make money, not going to attract readership, and I&amp;#039;m not going to have 10,000 Instagram followers liking my selfie. Then, when my ideals and values started shifting towards why I wanted to do the blog in the first place and what message I wanted to put out, Photoshopping my body to make me look different was not in line with what I wanted to do.  I&amp;#039;ve gone in the direction of having my blog be more of a place for women\u2013even in the comments section\u2014to air out the things that they&amp;#039;re feeling about their bodies. One thing that I&amp;#039;ve noticed with my readers is that they&amp;#039;re very open with me. And someone had commented on an old post saying something like, &amp;#039;You&amp;#039;re so beautiful,&amp;#039; and I thought, even if it&amp;#039;s a two inch line [I&amp;#039;ve retouched], I still don&amp;#039;t feel like I was 100 percent honest. It took me a few months to actually put this post out\u2014I had to gain the courage to do it. I&amp;#039;ve said before to other people, my skin and my stomach are huge insecurities for me. I&amp;#039;ve had acne all my life\u2014even having people see me in the morning without makeup is scary, let alone the whole world seeing me without Photoshop. But I felt like I had to do it and be honest with my readers\u2014and better late than never.  Photo: Do The Hot Pants Also, I was tired. If I was going to shoot for the blog on a Saturday, I would spend three hours at the gym on Friday night trying to work out, pushing myself to exhaustion, so that I would look good for a shoot the next day. I finally thought, &amp;#039;I can&amp;#039;t have this ruining my life anymore.&amp;#039; It&amp;#039;s scary to be putting myself out there, but if this is what I&amp;#039;m doing, if I&amp;#039;m killing myself and getting injuries at the gym, just for this blog, then the blog isn&amp;#039;t worth it.  The response has been overwhelming, but I&amp;#039;ve just been trying to stay above water and all the positive responses have been keeping me going. The craziest thing I&amp;#039;ve received is e-mails from parents saying that their daughters are depressed, and they don&amp;#039;t have any tools to show them about body image. So they&amp;#039;re like, &amp;#039;Thank you for putting yourself out there, I&amp;#039;m showing this to my daughter.&amp;#039; So [going forward], I have to be honest now\u2014I can&amp;#039;t lie to these people who trust me. Before this all went viral, it was a little more personal\u2014just comments from the people who &amp;quot;know me&amp;quot; or know what I&amp;#039;m about online. So it was 100% supportive. I cried when I read some of the responses\u2014I had friends texting me, telling me they could really relate to it and that they were proud of me. A lot of people said they were really proud of me, and that meant a lot. Since it&amp;#039;s gone viral, I&amp;#039;ve been trying not to read too many of the comments. A lot of people say it&amp;#039;s just a skinny girl or a perfect girl trying to show us how perfect she is without Photoshop. If they only knew how upset I was about my body when I saw the un-Photopped photos on those posts. You know, in one of them I was in tears, thinking, &amp;#039;I can&amp;#039;t believe my stomach bulges out that much, I&amp;#039;m hideous, I have to retouch this.&amp;#039; I just wish people would know the insecurity I felt and how common it is with women. I want these people in the end to realize they&amp;#039;re attacking the very thing that I&amp;#039;m trying to say don&amp;#039;t attack.  I&amp;#039;m doing this because I wish that when I was going through the worst parts of my self-esteem issues, I had something like this to look at.  [Photoshoping] is the norm\u2014and it&amp;#039;s crazy because I&amp;#039;m getting these e-mails from readers saying &amp;#039;I had no idea.&amp;#039; It&amp;#039;s not common knowledge at all\u2014which I think is why my story has been so big, even though my Photoshopping isn&amp;#039;t that drastic. I think it&amp;#039;s like, &amp;#039;Oh my god these people who claim they&amp;#039;re regular people don&amp;#039;t really look like that?&amp;#039; They&amp;#039;re setting the bar so high that even regular people can&amp;#039;t look regular.   Photo: Dana Suchow I think that fashion bloggers are the end result\u2014I&amp;#039;m not going to shame a blogger for Photoshopping him or herself. I think that we have to look at the bigger picture of why they&amp;#039;re doing it\u2014why they feel the need to do it. There&amp;#039;s so much pressure in society for people to be perfect\u2014especially online\u2014any sort of celebrity or public persona. I&amp;#039;ve actually had a couple fashion bloggers respond to me saying, &amp;#039;Hey, we want to work on a project together or raise awareness for this or if we Photoshop our photos, including a disclaimer\u2014being more transparent.&amp;#039; It&amp;#039;s really inspiring.  I&amp;#039;m not shaming models or skinny women, I&amp;#039;m just saying there&amp;#039;s a whole spectrum of people on this planet who aren&amp;#039;t being utilized or shown to the public. It&amp;#039;s a very narrow view of what is perfect. It&amp;#039;s in all the magazine and advertisements and it&amp;#039;s scary\u2014and even scarier when I get these e-mails from parents saying their kids don&amp;#039;t fit into that norm. It just breaks my heart. I&amp;#039;m not saying that fashion is wrong or that Photoshop is a terrible program. I&amp;#039;m just saying nothing is real\u2014nothing that you see in an advertisement or on TV is real. Your body is real. So all that energy you&amp;#039;re spending [worrying]\u2014all those hours I spent at the gym on Friday nights, I could have written a novel. But I&amp;#039;m so thankful that I&amp;#039;m now at the point where I&amp;#039;ve realized it and I&amp;#039;ve come out a stronger person. As told to Sally Holmes. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elle.com/fashion/news/a25158/dana-suchow-blog-photoshop-do-the-hot-pants/>