171–180 of 184 posts
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You're comparing advertisement to skill based jobs...
TIL being a 6'5" athletic model is not a skill, being a 6'5" athlete is a skill.
But even more so, whether it's a skill or not it's irrelevant. One is sports, the other is advertisement. We always have the ability to restrict one domain but not the other.
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> Does the prominence matter? Size? Adjacent material? No, no and no.
Okay. The last page of each issue with be the names and headshots of the 100 top staff at the magazine. "Problem solved."
(Also I'm not sure how pics of the "top 100" staff of the magazine will fix an already skewed distribution in the models shown. Assuming the top 100 staff follow the regular population distribution, the skew will still be there after adding them).
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Okay. The last page of each issue with be the names and headshots of the 100 top staff at the magazine. "Problem solved."
"Nice try of subverting the spirit of the law -- here's your 100K fine" -- see how easy it is? (Also I'm not sure how pics of the "top 100" staff of the magazine will fix an already skewed distribution in the models shown. Assuming the top 100 staff follow the regular population distribution, the skew will still be there after adding them).
(2) Most senior staff will be, well senior, and will counterbalance the tendency toward youth and fitness.
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You talk about these like they are two distinct problems, but they're closely related. Unhealthy body image drives a lot of unhealthy food behaviors and weight gain [1]. That negative body image is driven by many things, including fashion culture promoting atypical or fictional bodies [2][3]. It is also driven by a culture of fat shaming. [4] So if you are really serious about reducing harm from obesity, promoting mo…
I don't think the first link really provides any real insight into the problem. First of all, the study isn't experimental. There could easily be many confounding variables here, such as depression causing more body satisfaction issues. Another issue could be that overweight people with low body satisfaction are less satisfied because they have been warned more about it (chicken-and-egg); for example, if a child had…
> 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-prod…
Retouching a photo has been done since the (physical, real) lightroom days. Many of the strange phrases and techniques in Photoshop (dodge and burn, and probably crop and most others with photo-specific context) came from techniques in the lightroom.
Even the most famous photographers adjusted their photos in the lightroom, making alterations that are absolutely in the 'retouched' category. You can find these online (Cartier-Bresson did this, and many others). Source: https://petapixel.com/2013/09/12/marked-photographs-show-ico...
Therefore, it's extremely common for any portrait or wedding or any other photographer to retouch. Do 100% do it? Probably not 100%, but damn close.
It's not considered cheating to remove an element, lighten or completely darken/render invisible an element of the photo.
What the photography community considers cheating is portraying something that isn't there. There's a fascinating conversation with a photojournalist on the topic here with examples: https://petapixel.com/2015/08/04/interview-michael-kamber-on...
So is taking a model and making her thinner, taller and tanner retouching to the point of portraying something that isn't there? Which is a vague phrase, admittedly. Perhaps.
But what about removing a pimple from the face? If you get a portrait done professionally, it'll be almost automatic. Maybe it's not so bad. But if it is, let's say, then what about giving you a better skin tone? Because a bare flash without a CTO gel, or the mid-day sun, with a daylight white balance, is going to make you look potentially weird (if you're caucasian in this example; you might look ghostly). A lamppost nearby, or a store sign nearby might change your skin tone too. So what if you change the white balance in Photoshop/Lightroom/Gimp/whatever and make it look a little bit like sunset? Is that cheating?
But if you do nothing, there's automated settings in cameras that will auto-set skin tone and adjust lighting conditions. Is that cheating?
It's all extremely vague because the BBC article failed to explain the criteria for retouching: the word retouching is too broad.
This is an endlessly debated topic in the photographic community, but banning ALL retouching would, I am convinced, be reviled by almost everybody.
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 (…
And that's good. There's only a limited number of them. Either they'll get paid so high only few will afford them, or they'll just run out of time to do the photo shots for everyone.
Then the studios will have to use "less ideal" people. That's encouragement and incentives.
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> 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. That sounds like an infringement on the freedom of speech, in countries where it applies. It also seems ridiculously difficult to judge and enforce. The government would n…
> That sounds like an infringement on the freedom of speech, in countries where it applies. Bah, sounds as totally irrelevant to the "freedom of speech" as not allowing cigarette ads and other such things. And of course not every country considers marketing drivel and fashion as parts of such protected speech worthy of freedom. > It also seems ridiculously difficult to judge and enforce. The government would need to…
I'm sorry I just don't see comparable public harm between smoking and idealized images of people. Second-hand smoke is bad for everyone whereas I'd have to deliberately open up a fashion magazine to get the worst effects of idealized images. And AFAIK there hasn't been a concerted effort by the fashion industry to suppress research that shows harm caused by such images.
> And of course not every country considers marketing drivel and fashion as parts of such protected speech worthy of freedom.
I would argue that fashion is an art form (and many in the industry do as well). You may find its message mundane or uninteresting or "drivel" but that's beside the point.
What about niche magazines (eg. particular music subcultures, hobbies dominated by a particular gender) that would find it much harder to reflect the general population?
All of this doesn't even take into account that magazine publishing is a declining industry and a lot of this activity happens online. How do you even begin to regulate Pinterest, Twitter, Tumblr, YouTube and Facebook in terms of the proportions of images they carry?
Summing it all up, I don't think that a regulation like this is practical to enforce and there's very little evidence that it'll accomplish anything useful. Why not spend the government's limited time and resources where they may have a larger effect?
> They don't need to prove they are correct any more than they do for any other kind of data the government measures and uses to determine law policy.
Currently that data is used to determine health policy, not for deciding how to hand out fines (I could be wrong about this). If you start fining magazines based on that data it seems likely to me there'll be lawsuits flying all over the place contesting the veracity of the data.
> Health inspectors don't eat at a restaurant 24/7 either.
No but their primary job is performing healthy and safety inspections [2]; they don't need to eat at restaurants. At restaurants they inspect the kitchen and service areas, bathrooms, trash handling and disposal procedures, making sure employees follow health codes etc. And I don't see the connection anyway: you're obviously going to task someone with the job, whether part-time full-time, and prioritize it over some other work they could be doing.
> It's only silly if you exaggerate it for comedic effect or for slippery slopism.
Sorry that was a line from the dystopian satire that I said this idea sounded like the premise to (I can see how that might've been confusing). That's why it was silly.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertical_farming 2. http://work.chron.com/role-public-health-inspector-16092.htm...
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Almost everyone in the US is a prisoner of their car. Our built environment presumes that you have a car. We make it very challenging to live without one. And then we have to listen to Stephen Hawking be judgy about how we "choose" to not be active, which he can't understand from his wheelchair. Most Americans are confined to a wheeled chair for many hours a week. We just call it a car, but good luck getting free of…
Half of the problem is not the infrastructure, but peoples priorities and the public perception of the pros/cons of a car. Also the value of the car as a symbol. A couple will make 3 kids and say "I can't do without a car". But the couple never ponder the cost of making a family. The fact or having a car or not, and other matters of life style, are an after thoughs. And if you raise the issue, you are a cold robot fo…
And no, in many places in USA a car is just about the only way how to get kids to school. Which you have to. And yep, cycling along unsafe road when you are adult and when you are 8 is not the same. So ype, familly with children needs car more then single healthy adult.
And yep, unless you want to face aging population problem later on, 3 kids should be doable. Just to get replacement level of population.
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> 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. That magazine will go out of business. No one remembers how much of a flop Dove's products endured when it tried to advertise them with real bodies?
Huh, I thought that Dove campaign was effective... seems like it was: http://adage.com/article/news/ten-years-dove-s-real-beauty-a...