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Is she Photoshopped? In France, they now have to tell you

bbc.co.uk

31–40 of 184 posts

Re: Is she Photoshopped? In France, they now have to tell you

#31

The implication of this article is that agencies would be obligated to use what the article calls "more obtainable" bodies. Is this actually the case? I think it's vastly more likely that this will do little more than sharply increase the demand for people that actually have the bodies that other individuals were being photoshopped to have. It'd be like if a country banned all voice processing software when singing (…

>The implication of this article is that agencies would be obligated to use what the article calls "more obtainable" bodies. Is this actually the case? I think it's vastly more likely that this will do little more than sharply increase the demand for people that actually have the bodies that other individuals were being photoshopped to have.

You could always insist that the distribution of bodies shown in a magazine follows the distribution of weights/heights in the general population (with some margin of error). And heavily fine them out of business when it does not. Problem solved.

(The voice processing ban example doesn't capture the problem with body photos, because people don't go out of their way to sound like their favorite singers -- auto-tuned or not--, nor does it have many adverse psychological or health effects to have singers voices be unattainable to most people. Whereas body image from ad/fashion/etc models influences the self-perception of billions of people, and leads a multiple-100s billion dollars industry).

Re: Is she Photoshopped? In France, they now have to tell you

#33
post #26
post #15

> It's no secret that images of models are often retouched Well it's not a secret, but it's not obvious for most teenagers. And may be not either for people without high degrees education. A lot of people, and I suppose not only in France, are not at peace with their body shape, even if they're not obese nor anorexic. Been exposed to not really existing bodies images can be painful for self esteem. Of course, compute…

> Well it's not a secret, but it's not obvious for most teenagers. Fair enough but the list of things that can harm a teen's self esteem is endless. So in a way there is no way around learning how to deal with issues of imperfection on a personal level. And this, in turn, makes you wonder whether you couldn't spend the money that goes into this project more worthwhile. For instance, you could invest it in free sport…

>Fair enough but the list of things that can harm a teen's self esteem is endless.

Many things are endless or numerous, that's why people prioritize dealing with a) the most important ones, b) low hanging fruits.

Re: Is she Photoshopped? In France, they now have to tell you

#34

In the United States, Obesity is one of the leading causes of death, with estimates as high as 300,000 deaths/year. (See https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/adult.html ) Deaths from Anorexia are about 150/year (See https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11513012 ) Yet we're all hypersensitive about telling women they are overweight or obese. It would be like spending weeks in urban schools talking about how to avoid poison…

[ Disclosure: As Brit I have no idea how the US treats these issues, I'm only going on how the UK does ]

> Yet we're all hypersensitive about telling women they are overweight or obese.

The UK already tackles these issues by banning a great deal, if not all food adverts on TV channels at times that children will typically watch, it's very easy to say that we should be focusing more effort on some subject but actually in fact we are focusing on the problem of obesity the one of the things we haven't really focused a huge amount of effort on is anorexia which still kills people ( and even more tragically, typically young people )

> Deaths from Anorexia are about 150/year

I actually went through and read the paper that you sourced that quote from and I think the author actually misses a big issue source of possible fatalities, primary it's not focusing on the suicide numbers. Instead it goes to focus on the death certificate counts for anorexia, there's probably doesn't mean that it's going to have a very good representation in the same way that you can't directly blame a lot of deaths on obesity directly because it causes other long-term issues

Re: Is she Photoshopped? In France, they now have to tell you

#36
post #23

> any commercial image that has been digitally altered to make a model look thinner This will backfire. Ads will only use ultra-thin models, it's not like there aren't.

Images of those ultra-thin models are themselves typically photoshopped to remove signs of anorexia and bulimia (arm hair, gray pallor, dental discoloration, pronounced tendons). This is (according to an acquaintance whose day job used to be retouching fashion photos) a frequent enough need that language like "remove visible signs of anorexia" is included in the boilerplate instructions given by agencies to post-production teams.

Re: Is she Photoshopped? In France, they now have to tell you

#37

Are they going to start telling you when they're wearing makeup or not?

They already do in the UK - to a degree. Here's a mascara advert which was banned because the model was wearing fake eyelashes.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/04/18/rimmel-mascara-ad...

A similar case in the USA - http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/14/fashion/Mascara-Ads-Draw-C...

Re: Is she Photoshopped? In France, they now have to tell you

#38

The implication of this article is that agencies would be obligated to use what the article calls "more obtainable" bodies. Is this actually the case? I think it's vastly more likely that this will do little more than sharply increase the demand for people that actually have the bodies that other individuals were being photoshopped to have. It'd be like if a country banned all voice processing software when singing (…

Who decides authenticity, some government official?

Humans mold their environment and themselves, does tool use somehow destroy authenticity?

Authenticity is a nebulous and largely subjective concept, and trying to guide any public policy towards such a concept is foolish.

Re: Is she Photoshopped? In France, they now have to tell you

#39

In the United States, Obesity is one of the leading causes of death, with estimates as high as 300,000 deaths/year. (See https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/adult.html ) Deaths from Anorexia are about 150/year (See https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11513012 ) Yet we're all hypersensitive about telling women they are overweight or obese. It would be like spending weeks in urban schools talking about how to avoid poison…

What is your point here, beyond "Fat people are fat"?

Do you believe that obese women don't know they're fat? What would telling them they're fat accomplish? None of this makes sense and it's just an excuse to be unkind.

Re: Is she Photoshopped? In France, they now have to tell you

#40

In the United States, Obesity is one of the leading causes of death, with estimates as high as 300,000 deaths/year. (See https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/adult.html ) Deaths from Anorexia are about 150/year (See https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11513012 ) Yet we're all hypersensitive about telling women they are overweight or obese. It would be like spending weeks in urban schools talking about how to avoid poison…

Generally people know they're overweight, and there is no shyness about telling people so. Especially women.

What there is a lack of is compassionate, practical help. It's quite a bit like smoking; few people would argue that they didn't know they were smoking, the issue is whether they care about the negative health effects and how they can actually do something about it that sticks.

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