You are currently browsing the daily archive for March 17th, 2008.
If you’re looking at this and thinking that a little bit of Photoshopping took place, you are correct. There was only a little bit. The day really was that ugly. However my slight abuse of self-imposed creative counsel led me to an article in The Daily Telegraph, about how a group of French MPs want health warnings on airbrushed photographs.
A group of 50 politicians want a new law stating published images must have a bold printed notice announcing that they have been digitally enhanced. Campaigning MP Valerie Boyer, of President Nicolas Sarkozy’s UMP party, said the wording should read, “Retouched photograph aimed at changing a person’s physical appearance”.
Mrs Boyer said, “We want to combat the stereotypical image that all women are young and slim”, adding, “Billboard photos and those on product packaging, as well as photos used in political campaigns or artistic photos, should also be included.” President Sarkozy was himself airbrushed two years ago, when Paris Match magazine ‘rubbed out’ his love-handles in a photo of him canoeing.
Me, I’m happy living my delusional little existence in the thought that these beauties really do exist, but clearly I am also not a prime target for pathological eating disorders.
However, other than someone happy to corrupt his images and believing that others have an equal right, be it in the public domain or not, I do question this proposal. I firmly believe that the power of an image leaves a far stronger imprint in a youthful mind than any written warning that will accompany it. So while of good intention, I also see this initiative as futile. Just see the effect of the warnings on cigarette packets; even without a strong image attached to them, they do little to dissuade otherwise intelligent creatures from knowingly, slowly killing themselves.
On a practical level, as our world gently globalises, even France is not able to avoid the the tsunami of foreign media that bombards its shores; perhaps Mme Boyer has ideals greater than just the French media campaigns?
And I do have some faith in our self-regulation, as witnessed first-hand by Ralph Lauren, who famously suffered a barrage of abuse for images of a heavily over-touched model who appeared to be disappearing at the waist.
Maybe there needs to be more done to help sufferers of eating disorders, I am just not convinced that this is it.
