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Finding Lena Forsen, the Patron Saint of JPEGs

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Re: Finding Lena Forsen, the Patron Saint of JPEGs

#51

Post by yawaramin »

whatshisface wrote: post #49
yawaramin wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it's not about you. It's about the women who see the image, understand its history, and see it as another reminder of how tech is not just male-dominated but thoughtlessly so (having Playboy issues lying around in the research lab) and where women are literally reduced to objects. From the article: > “As silly as it sounds, they were surprised she was a real person,” he told me. Women notice stuff like that,…

I had no idea about the origin of the picture until people started discussing it, so actually this might result in more people being uncomfortable, not less. Consider this thought experiment: suppose that in some foreign language the word "hello," once had a horrible and offense meaning. However both sides of the past social divide had forgotten its past meaning and now it is used commonly as a greeting. Now, some we…

Do I really need to consider every blue-sky armchair-philosopher thought experiment? ;-) We can all make up extreme hypotheticals that have like a 0.000001% chance of ever happening in the real world and using that to justify our philosophy.

Anyway, just to play along–dude, just say 'Hi'. It's not that hard and you're saving like three letters every time. Your life just got easier!

Re: Finding Lena Forsen, the Patron Saint of JPEGs

#52

Post by v64 »

yawaramin wrote: post #50
v64 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But human beings generally engage in this kind of objectification, and it's often not malicious. For instance, people elicit similar reactions to meeting athletes for the first time (i.e. only knowing them on TV in a competitive context, and then meeting them in reality and discovering for the first time their non-sport related traits and characteristics that are incongruent with their athletic persona). I don't inte…

Yeah but in your effort to make an analogy, you're missing the point, which is that context matters. You need to look at the context of using objectified pictures of women in the workplace, especially one where women are routinely given signals that they don't belong. Your example of a fan meeting an athlete or celebrity for the first time is just a wildly different context.

If context matters, we can't apply our modern standards to a time with different standards. In the context of the time when the image was originally promulgated, it was done without controversy. The act is only controversial outside of its original historical context.

Re: Finding Lena Forsen, the Patron Saint of JPEGs

#53

Post by yawaramin »

v64 wrote: post #48
yawaramin wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, because my wording was carefully chosen to reflect the actual attitudes of the people who worked with the image, not my personal feelings about Playboy models. If you'll notice, I included a quote from the article where they literally did not know (and had never cared enough to find out!) that the image was of a real person. It was literally an objectified woman.

But human beings generally engage in this kind of objectification, and it's often not malicious. For instance, people elicit similar reactions to meeting athletes for the first time (i.e. only knowing them on TV in a competitive context, and then meeting them in reality and discovering for the first time their non-sport related traits and characteristics that are incongruent with their athletic persona). I don't inte…

> If context matters, we can't apply our modern standards to a time with different standards. In the context of the time when the image was originally promulgated, it was done without controversy. The act is only controversial outside of its original historical context.

You make it sound like this was 500 years ago! Anyway, no one is saying to retroactively condemn the people who did it. They are saying to stop using it now. The context is the use of the picture in the here and now contributing to non-inclusion of women in tech.

Re: Finding Lena Forsen, the Patron Saint of JPEGs

#54

Post by v64 »

yawaramin wrote: post #53
v64 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But human beings generally engage in this kind of objectification, and it's often not malicious. For instance, people elicit similar reactions to meeting athletes for the first time (i.e. only knowing them on TV in a competitive context, and then meeting them in reality and discovering for the first time their non-sport related traits and characteristics that are incongruent with their athletic persona). I don't inte…

> If context matters, we can't apply our modern standards to a time with different standards. In the context of the time when the image was originally promulgated, it was done without controversy. The act is only controversial outside of its original historical context. You make it sound like this was 500 years ago! Anyway, no one is saying to retroactively condemn the people who did it. They are saying to stop using…

And I think we need to ask, if the subject of the photograph is "proud of that picture" and feels that the photograph is "an immense accomplishment", then why are modern audiences perceiving it in a negative light?

If Lena came out saying she felt abused by the distribution of her photograph in this manner and that the practice needed to cease, I would agree with you. But her comments indicate to me that individuals ought to reconsider their reaction in light of the subject's perspective. If we respect what Lena believes, and sought her out to document her opinion, then we should seriously consider the weight of her opinion of her own life and own image versus ours.

Re: Finding Lena Forsen, the Patron Saint of JPEGs

#55

Post by kyberias »

yawaramin wrote: post #37
patrickg_zill wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So all of the women who have been in Playboy have no agency? Maybe they shouldn't be allowed to vote then... ! Is it not also significant that she then was a model and became a "Shirley" at another company also?

No one said anything about the agency of Playboy models, only about the inappropriateness of using Playboy or other NSFW materials in professional environments making women uncomfortable. In the privacy of your own home, do whatever you like (legally). But don't bring it into the office!

But it most definitely is not a NSFW image because it was cropped.

Re: Finding Lena Forsen, the Patron Saint of JPEGs

#56

Post by qubex »

Pharmakon wrote: post #15
iamleppert wrote: post #12

What’s wrong with female beauty? It’s not like it’s porn or a nude image. I’m not even a straight male but I can still appreciate female beauty and I don’t think it’s sexist. The photo is more artistic than anything. I wonder if the same people who complain about this photo lodge similar complaints when they visit art museums that have female nudity in oil paintings or nude female sculptures? I know nudity and even a…

Personally I’m not bothered, and while the image isn’t pornographic, it is from Playboy which does make it at least porn adjacent. I see it’s use less as a matter of offensiveness or some headfuck of “intersectionality” and more as just immature and unprofessional. Sexuality is great, it’s everywhere, and I think it has literally nothing to do with this issue. I can understand not wanting a Playboy model to be the st…

I’m a nudist (meaning I have no problem being naked or seeing people without clothes on when it is comfortable, publicly or privately). What on earth is wrong with a nude photograph? What does it say about humankind that we deny our baseline state?

Re: Finding Lena Forsen, the Patron Saint of JPEGs

#57

Post by qubex »

jordigh wrote: post #38

I feel that whenever Lena is mentioned, we should also give a shoutout to the researchers who were fed up with her and decided to use Fabio instead. https://arxiv.org/abs/1202.6429 What do you guys (yes, guys) think about making Fabio the standard image instead?

Well on her (the researcher), her (Lena), and him (Fabio). Well on all of them.

Re: Finding Lena Forsen, the Patron Saint of JPEGs

#58

Post by olalonde »

Pharmakon wrote: post #15
iamleppert wrote: post #12

What’s wrong with female beauty? It’s not like it’s porn or a nude image. I’m not even a straight male but I can still appreciate female beauty and I don’t think it’s sexist. The photo is more artistic than anything. I wonder if the same people who complain about this photo lodge similar complaints when they visit art museums that have female nudity in oil paintings or nude female sculptures? I know nudity and even a…

Personally I’m not bothered, and while the image isn’t pornographic, it is from Playboy which does make it at least porn adjacent. I see it’s use less as a matter of offensiveness or some headfuck of “intersectionality” and more as just immature and unprofessional. Sexuality is great, it’s everywhere, and I think it has literally nothing to do with this issue. I can understand not wanting a Playboy model to be the st…

I guess most people using it have no idea it's a picture from Playboy, nor a nude picture, nor a controversial picture. I used it a lot myself when I was working on content based image retrieval simply because all the literature was using it. It never even occurred to me I was being controversial or sexist.

Now that I'm aware of the picture's history, I agree that it was a poor choice back then but I disagree that using it today is somehow an endorsement of sexism. Using it today only means you are using the standard image processing image.

Re: Finding Lena Forsen, the Patron Saint of JPEGs

#59

Post by 59nadir »

Lena Forsén*

You'd think, having written a whole article about her, you'd be able to spell her name right. It's incredible to me how relaxed people in English speaking countries, particularly the US, are with removing and changing letters as they see fit.

I remember seeing someone on Reddit, for example, who had named their kid Soren, after Søren Kierkegaard, completely ignoring that it's not even the same name. Do people realize that these letters are different looking for a reason?

Re: Finding Lena Forsen, the Patron Saint of JPEGs

#60

Post by johndough »

jordigh wrote: post #38

I feel that whenever Lena is mentioned, we should also give a shoutout to the researchers who were fed up with her and decided to use Fabio instead. https://arxiv.org/abs/1202.6429 What do you guys (yes, guys) think about making Fabio the standard image instead?

The Fabio image is not very useful wrt image compression:

  - grayscale (lenna image is rgb)
  - very odd 271x257 resolution (lenna image is square 512x512 which is a power of two)
  - just hair as fine detail features (lenna image has several: hat, feather boa and hair)
https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-jUHXZ0jW4Lc/T1t3W0ex2BI/AAAAAAAAF...

http://www.betapleatedchic.com/uploads/3/0/4/1/30413754/4907...

An optimal image would have the following properties:

  - different textures at different
    - scale
    - brightness
    - frequency
  - easily recognizable features
  - color
  - power of two resolution
  - no cultural issues 
  - no licensing issues (not a scan of a magazine, globally recognized license, i.e. not "public domain")
The problem with faces is that on the one hand, humans are able to tell easily if a feature was destroyed by an image compression algorithm, but on the other hand it's personally identifiable information and therefore comes with additional legal restrictions in many jurisdictions.
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