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Okay imma rant on main, this is informal so feel free to fact check me

There's this theory that early photography, since it occupied the same fuction in society as portrait paintings did, was not expected to be 'a depiction of actual reality' as it is today.

It was REALLY COMMON to just retouch pictures

Not just in the wacky 'victorians holding their own head' joke pictures they liked to do, but actual normal pictures.

There's this book titled “A Complete Treatsie on the Art of Retouching Photographic Negatives” (the title is even longer but i can't be bothered to type it all out, I am sleepy)

Anyways, the book implies that if you did get your photo taken at a studio, as was often done, retouching was straight up standart part of the process. It was Expected.

You see all victorian’s smooth skin? Lies. Well, not lies, more like ✨ Illusion ✨

(yes this is the first man that apeared when I looked up Victorian Portrait, what of it?)

This smoothing was done by actual manipulation of lighting, exposure, but could also be done after the photograph was done with pencil, pen, or even by scraping it.

Hell, even body shape could be altered, tho this was more common in the Edwardian period as oposed to the Victorian one:

So what I want to say, is that just cause it looks old it doesn’t mean it’s “more natural” or “more backwards”, however you want to look back. Textured skin has always existed, fat bodies have always existed, most women did not tighlace to hell and back.

They rendered their pictures just as we do. That’s all.