Ban or disclaim "Photoshopping" in the media [body image laws]

[Kym]

Ban or disclaim "Photoshopping" meaning photo editing in general.

This would help with body image problems.
Goodbye liquefy and skin softening

http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/...report/5225592

Should the state step in and regulate the use of overly skinny models and rampant photo alteration in the media? According to new laws passed in Israel, any Photoshopped image must have a clear warning, and all models must have a minimum Body Mass Index of 18.5. As Damien Carrick writes, the laws have strong supporters in Australia.

http://www.nd.edu.au/news/media-releases/2014/322

Research conducted by a lecturer at The University of Notre Dame Australia's School of Law, Fremantle, Marilyn Krawitz, published this week in the Journal of Law and Medicine, states that seeing digitally-altered images of people in popular media can create negative body image issues in young people. Ms Krawitz is calling for the Australian Government to consider implementing Israel's 'Photoshop Law' to help mitigate the onset of youth body image issues.

Discuss!

[Cage]

I wonder who first came to the conclusion that the buying public would only purchase their gear if it was presented for appraisal on some poor skinny anorexic model.

It's actually a form of false advertising as it tries to con people into thinking that if they buy, they will look like the model.

Bring it on I say !

[Kym]

Drape a model over a tractor and it sells better?

Sex sells as the say, just watch Gruen Transfer.

Which reminds me of Olga the Soviet weight lifter who came 2nd in the Volga beauty pageant, the tractor came first

[Mary Anne]

I personally hate the way Photographers photoshop models with their plastic or should that be plaster skins with glassy looking eyes that belong on Teddy Bears and Dolls.
And beside each Male out there looking to buy a tractor with a sexy looking chic draped over it would be a Female probably saying lets move on, or giving him a pinch
Enhancing the body is right though why bother when they dont look like that in real life, is it so their Family and Friends cannot recognize them in the magazines or posters ?

Should the State step in regulate the use of over skinny Models Yes I think its a good idea, though we will probably be paying for it out of our own pockets.
If it saves some poor Female from dieing of starvation just to keep a job then its worth it.
Your average Female on the Street is not that size, gee you look at those anorexic models and its hard to tell which is the front or the back.
Flat at the front and with two bones sticking out the back goodness a Guy would have to be in gaga land to think that was attractive.

[WhoDo]

While I have sympathy for the view that the fashion industry is putting too much pressure on people to be skinny (mostly because the clothes drape better on a skeletal frame, or so they say - I wonder who "they" are - anyway), I don't think it's the job of government to step in with yet more regulation. In my personal opinion, government regulation usually costs around 10 x what it's actually worth!

People have a responsibility to make the industry pay attention, and that is happening already with plus-sized models and the move to be photographed "clean" i.e. sans chemical or digital manipulation. That's a good thing. If body image is still a problem, and I'd say it is, then what are the parents doing about it? Why let some overpaid and underworked polly get his/her snout in the trough? Just sayin'. {flame away, peeps. I can take it ... I think}

[Lance B]

Couldn't agree more, Waz. I am sick of the nanny state mentality that seems to be pervading society now, that somehow the government knows best. Just look at the way the politicians behave is enough to put that thought to rest. It really is becoming an age where there will actually be thought police.

[ricktas]

This is not just the bane of fashion photography. When was the last time you saw an actual Big Mac or Whopper look like the images on their advertising? Or KFC that looked like their photos? Since when did a tampon make a lady carefree and ready to ride a bike? Or did a deodorant make you irresistible to all?

If we are going to legislate re photographs/images in advertising, it should be ALL photographs and images.

[Bennymiata]

I have to agree with Mary Anne.
I don't like bony women either.

Look at Marilyn Monroe. Now SHE was sexy!
Not skinny, and no Photoshop either.

I think that just about all professional images have to be Photoshopped to some degree, even if just to bring up the contrast and exposure etc, but there should be warnings if the body or face shape is actually altered.

[ameerat42]

This is not just the bane of fashion photography. When was the last time you saw an actual Big Mac or Whopper look like the images on their advertising? Or KFC that looked like their photos? Since when did a tampon make a lady carefree and ready to ride a bike? Or did a deodorant make you irresistible to all?

If we are going to legislate re photographs/images in advertising, it should be ALL photographs and images.

Rick. You took the words - or ideas - right out of my head. It's the wHOLE world that's being photoshopped - no disrespect to Adobe - into oblivion.

[rant]Now, just watch what a blurring filter does to electricity infrastructure in NSW. YES! Prices will drop - for a millisecond. Earnings will go towards
"easing Sydney's gridlock" for about the same amount of time. The money will be wasted!!! And can we trust them to manage such a venture anyway?[/rant]
Am(ranting).

[MissionMan]

I don't think it's advertising's fault. They have a job to make things appealing. They are paid to sell the product by their customers.

I don't think the issue has anything to do with advertising. It has to do with parenting. People expect TV's to be their kid's parents, they expect schools to teach sex education, don't want schools to grade people in case it hurts their kids feelings and they expect the government to provide everything to them free of charge and then wonder why their kids end up with no respect for adults and no concept of responsibility for their actions.

I think we need to take a step back and ask parents what they are doing to bring up their kids. What are they doing to help their kids understand that advertising is fake? I see example of people suing Macdonald's for obesity when it has nothing to do with Macdonald's. It has to do with the failure of parents to give their children guidance and be their parents. I didn't need the government to tell me that burgers and chips were bad for me when I was a kid. That was what my parents told me when they forced me to sit at the table and finish my vegetables before I went to bed.

[arthurking83]

..... I am sick of the nanny state mentality that seems to be pervading society now, that somehow the government knows best. .....

I think you have 99% of the general population with you there Lance.
Well if not 99%, then my 100% support there!

I think many people are shirking their responsibility as a parent to educate their kids about the bucketloads of tripe being forced onto us in the form of advertising and media coverage of 'what's in and what's not'.

Every time I sit with my kids and we're watching some inane station that relies on ads for revenue, I'm always making snide/cynical/sarcastic remarks with a dash of humour that my kids will understand.
They always stop and ask me what my comment was about .. and the next time the ad is on, I'll elaborate as it's aired.

I know they're picking up on this subtle brainwashing that advertising is 101% bullsh!t ... as when an ad plays that is obviously of that obvious type, they start lambasting it themselves(ie. without my input or even being there!)

This is good(for them) hopefully in that they see through the carp and make informed choices based on the merits of the product being sold.
I'm always making byline comments to them that if the stuff needs good looking people to sell the stuff then the stuff is almost certainly rubbish.

My kids are 12(girl) and 14 (boy) and if you ask them what's their favourite TV show, you'd probably laugh to know it will be The Checkout. They love it, but we've missed them as it clashes with their daily routine.

Government intervention is not the solution. The mindless public is to blame for buying the products being sold when advertised with such tactics.
The answer is simple .. buy the products that use normal people, or unphotoshopped models or whatever.

The real problem is that neither government action, nor public education will solve the problem .. people in general are just too stupid to know what's going on and that they can change the world.
On the Melb walk last Sat, were were at the Bourke St mall, and a new shop had opened up on the site of the old post office(sorry can't remember the name of the shop .. maybe bitsnpieces will tho).

The queue waiting to get in to be the first to bag their bargain was insanely long. it doubled back on itself about 5 times or so and each leg was about 30ish meters long, and one of Davids friends comments on how deep it was.
I was amazed that those people had the patience to wait in ordinary weather for what surely have been hours just to get into a shop to potentially save a couple of dollars.
You could just see that the hype that preceded the opening of the store had worked to a tee(for the company).
Do people really have all that time on their hands where they can afford half a day to stand in a queue to potentially get into a store where they may possibly have the opportunity to purchase what it was they thought they wanted, only to find it's not there and probably purchase something else instead!?

Somehow the message needs to be set into these type of consumers minds that it's not healthy to camp out the front of a store for four or five days just to be one of the first to get an iPhone or the latest tshirts donned by a distorted model in the latest facebook fad ad.

This type of advertising method will always work if people are allowing themselves to be conned by it. Only when this mass of hypnotised consumers wakes up to it all will the advertising model finally fail.
And also, how does the government provide any real action against an industry without any real geographical boundaries.
Are we going to take the 'China route' to government action ala Tienanmen Sq memorial information, and allow them to censor the internet?

[MissionMan]

It's pretty funny, arthur, I wrote the short version of what you wrote about parenting a couple of seconds before you posted. You must have been writing when I posted it.

[ameerat42]

...I don't think it's advertising's fault. They have a job to make things appealing. They are paid to sell the product by their customers.

I don't think the issue has anything to do with advertising. It has to do with parenting...

You are too kind, MM - to the advertisers!

They are paid - ultimately by the customers - to make things appealing to THE customers! - Whether they want it or not.

It's the way of the world: it spins not only on its axis, but on hype.

[arthurking83]

..... You must have been writing when I posted it.

Well we both know that great minds think alike!
(and you really should be worried if you start thinking like I do!! )

And I think I was out on the front porch, having a quick smoke for a lot of that time(probably just like you may have been doing at some point tonight )

[Mark L]

While advertising and parents may be involved, I think some of you are missing the point.
Quoting some of Kym's quotes.
"... Should the state step in and regulate the use of overly skinny models and rampant photo alteration in the media?...."
"Research conducted by a lecturer at The University of Notre Dame Australia's School of Law, Fremantle, Marilyn Krawitz, published this week in the Journal of Law and Medicine, states that seeing digitally-altered images of people in popular media can create negative body image issues in young people. ..."

Body image issues are important to young ladies. The way the female body is presented in media influences how they perceive themselves.
Young ladies are basing their self perception on something that is not real. It has negative consequences for some of them.
And dare I say that this is something, for some reason, almost exclusive to females and how they perceive themselves via the various media.
Some men may go fitter, stronger if that fits the image. It has less problems than what is involved in our young ladies body image problems.

But what would this bloke know about all this?
And of cause I may be missing the point.

[MissionMan]

As someone who grew up with body issues, I know all about it. I was on the other end of the spectrum as a scrawny underweight youngster no matter what I ate.

The reality was that most of my body issues didn't stem from advertising, it stemmed from people and that is the same issue you have with females. You can get plus sized models into every advert and it still won't change the perceptions within youth. That's like blaming violence on video games. Video games may desensitize people to violence, but it doesn't change the influence that the parents have on it.

As an example, in the interest in protecting people's feelings we now have one of the most obese nations in the world and one of the fastest growing obesity problems outside of the US. They are now comfortable about their bodies but they're obese. That does not solve the problem. It creates a whole new problem when they start dying at the age of thirty from heart disease, but hey, at least they are dying happy and comfortable about their bodies. The US has had to create new categories of obesity to cater for the changes.

For starters, we should be teaching us kids to be healthy, not thin. We should be teaching our kids that fat/thin has nothing to do with whether you are healthy, healthy has to do with diet and exercise, not diet pills or short cuts. And that's the part that most parents battle with because to do that, we actually have to lead by example and we've become a junk food culture that sits in front of the TV and our kids learn from their parents.


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[ricktas]

As someone who grew up with body issues, I know all about it. I was on the other end of the spectrum as a scrawny underweight youngster no matter what I ate.

The reality was that most of my body issues didn't stem from advertising, it stemmed from people and that is the same issue you have with females. You can get plus sized models into every advert and it still won't change the perceptions within youth. That's like blaming violence on video games. Video games may desensitize people to violence, but it doesn't change the influence that the parents have on it.

As an example, in the interest in protecting people's feelings we now have one of the most obese nations in the world and one of the fastest growing obesity problems outside of the US. They are now comfortable about their bodies but they're obese. That does not solve the problem. It creates a whole new problem when they start dying at the age of thirty from heart disease, but hey, at least they are dying happy and comfortable about their bodies. The US has had to create new categories of obesity to cater for the changes.

For starters, we should be teaching us kids to be healthy, not thin. We should be teaching our kids that fat/thin has nothing to do with whether you are healthy, healthy has to do with diet and exercise, not diet pills or short cuts. And that's the part that most parents battle with because to do that, we actually have to lead by example and we've become a junk food culture that sits in front of the TV and our kids learn from their parents.


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One could argue that the only reason overweight people, smokers etc are being told that what they are doing is bad for them, is that when they die younger, the global marketing, advertising, revenue creating capitalists are missing out on an opportunity to sell stuff to these people over a longer period. That really they do not care if we are overweight etc, at all. It is about getting us to live longer, so we earn more, spend more and keep their multi-national profits up. I don't think our governments etc really give a damn about individuals, they just don't want one of their numbers dying young, cause it means no more tax, spending etc from that human. We are all just a statistic, not a person, to governments, corporations etc. And dying younger is not good for their business.

But then I could argue on the side of health, and that they all do really care about each and everyone of us, and that body image issues etc are cared about by advertising companies, etc.

I wonder how many times people tell their kids how gorgeous they are, or how special they are, or how beautiful they look in some item of clothing. They grow up thinking they are gorgeous and special, or that what they look like and wear impacts on how people see them. Till someone treats them like they are not (and it will happen) and they have no idea how to deal with that. Rather than tell kids they are cute, gorgeous, special... tell them that you love them, that is what you mean anyway. And your kid is no more special than anyone else's.

It is not just advertising, it is everyone, as has been said above, but often we contribute to it all, with simple phrases like 'how cute are you".

[MissionMan]

I think the problem with the government is they react to short term problems without considering long term impacts. I also think the government go through a process of trying to ensure they don't foot the blame. A couple examples of this:

1. Parents sue government over their child committing suicide off westgate because it's the governments fault that the railing on the bridge was inadequate. In reality, it's the parents that don't want to take some responsibility for their child's situation or realise that the westgate was simply the method the son/daughter took, rather than the reason for it, and that if the child was serious about committing suicide, it's likely that even if the railings were adequate, they would have selected an alternative
2. Parents sue the government for a lack of level crossing where their son/daughter was killed by a train instead of accepting that it was their son/daughter's fault for crossing a railway line without looking for trains.
3. Schools not wanting to use exams as a means to evaluate students because it places "undue pressure" on them and one or two children a year commit suicide as a result. The reality is that most of the undue pressure is placed on students by their parents and now teachers are seen as the people responsible for a failure in students when it's largely the parents that don't force them to go to school or take any care to understand how well their kids are doing. In taking this approach, we give them an unfair perception of how the real world works (everyone isn't a winner in the real world and if you don't perform, you won't be given shiny certificate for the sake of being there).

Whilst all of the above are extremely sad, it is more unfortunately that people, or more specifically, parents don't take responsibility for their actions. Other people think it's unkind to push the responsibility onto them because they have already suffered a loss when blaming others does nothing to rectify the situation. I think it's this kind of approach (typical of the US where you sue everyone for your own stupidity or mistakes) that forces the government into over-reacting to situations to protect themselves from lawsuits, which in essence, takes away people's perspective that they actually need to take responsibility for their own actions instead of blaming others.

And by the way, I do disagree with telling your kids they are beautiful. Beauty should never be about looks. It should be about the person. I think it's better to reinforce to your children that society has a warped perception of what beauty is and they need to understand it's their own actions that make them a beautiful person. I think we have this perception that success in a relationship is finding someone beautiful/handsome. I think the opposite. Success in a relationship is finding someone who is your best friend because no matter how old and grey they are, they will always be beautiful to you

[Granville]

I still think they need to understand what they are trying to fix with legislation. In the words of Jesse Ventura when he was mayor of Minnesota, governments should do things that individuals cannot do, like build roads and create laws for the common good, and stay out of everything else. A generalisation, but not without merit.

To give them the benefit of the doubt, a government here would be concerned about the cost to the public purse of the health issues caused by promoting unrealistic body images. When the Marlboro Man road his horse into town smoking a cigarette, and people thought that was cool and bought Marlboro, the best weapon they used in the fight against cigarettes was not to ban the advertisers from portraying cigarette smoking as providing the avaiability of "hot chick" not available to the boring non smoker. It was education about the harm they caused.

The point has been made about altered images that do not involve skinny models, but involve Big Macs and other fast foods. More legislation on top of the other legislation.

Have all the legislation you want but it's not going to hit every button. Educate about the physical harm, like Quit campaigns did, and it will have a greater effect than banning skinny models alone.

[WhoDo]

One could argue that the only reason overweight people, smokers etc are being told that what they are doing is bad for them, is that when they die younger, the global marketing, advertising, revenue creating capitalists are missing out on an opportunity to sell stuff to these people over a longer period. That really they do not care if we are overweight etc, at all. It is about getting us to live longer, so we earn more, spend more and keep their multi-national profits up. I don't think our governments etc really give a damn about individuals, they just don't want one of their numbers dying young, cause it means no more tax, spending etc from that human. We are all just a statistic, not a person, to governments, corporations etc. And dying younger is not good for their business.

When I was a whole heap younger, I used to travel to work in Sydney by train. Every morning we'd go under an overpass that had this printed on the side (politically aware graffiti?) - "Consume. Be Silent. Die." I think that about sums things up, Rick, and don't get me started on funeral ads all day during the day. Surely we don't have to die just to get away from the bluddy things!