Arizona Democratic state Rep. Katie Hobbs (shown right in an unairbrushed photo) has tackled what she considers a pressing issue of the day: airbrushing of models to make them look perfect. She wants to require that any advertisers airbrushing models impose the following disclaimer prominently on the ad: “Postproduction techniques were made to alter the appearance in this advertisement. When using this product, similar results may not be achieved.” That is a bit of a buzz kill.
Hobbs is working with the YWCA of Maricopa County on the bill and Hobbs insists “I’ve worked on women’s issues a lot and this bill is primarily intended to highlight issues that women have with body image and how advertising plays into that.”
Such a bill would raise serious constitutional questions, but it is unlikely to pass. The question is whether this is appropriate legislation and good policy. I understand the problem of young girls trying to meet impossible standards of beauty. However, the solution is reaching out through educational and social programs — not limiting the expression of others. Whether it is body builders or models, young people often have images that are artificial or unattainable. We cannot legislate our way back to the recognition of Rubenesque beauty.
For full disclosure, I admit to some airbrushing on this site. The picture to the left is one that I have often used, but my untouched picture to the right does have some significant differences. I apologize for those bloggers who have developed dysfunctional eating habits or lifestyles. We regret the practice.
Source: MSNBC
I’ve been surfing online more than three hours today, yet I never found any interesting article like yours. It’s pretty worth enough for
me. In my opinion, if all web owners and bloggers made good content as you did, the internet will be much more useful than ever before.
Maybe individuals that are concerned with the advertising being presented to our society as “norm”, but are actually fabrications of reality and completely unobtainable….. Maybe we should stop supporting those advertisers. They do it because we buy it. If you’ve got a problem with Candies choosing airbrush over reality DON’T buy Candies. You’re going to end up with a rather short list to purchase from. But it will eventually turn around. That’s the American way. Everything that’s a problem in our culture doesn’t have to be resolved by legislation, but it takes true conviction & backbone from the people of the country to make a cultural change. We have a problem with things, but we always want someone else to fix it. Take responsibility for the change you want to see.
I agree with Mike: it’s definitely a consumer protection issue, particularly when the images are used to deceive as suggested here: