Curbing Digitally Altered Photographs of Women Means Better Images of Women.

Last week, a law was introduced in France’s National Assembly that, if passed, would force advertisers and magazine editors to print disclaimers on images of women that had been digitally altered, according to the article “A Move to Curb Digitally Altered Photos in Ads,” published in Monday’s New York Times. (The bill’s champion, Valerie Boyer, succeeded in shuttering “pro-ana” websites last year.)

The article also explains that earlier this month in Britain, Jo Swinson, a member of the Liberal Democratic Party, introduced a proposal that would permit Parliament to force Britain’s Advertising Standards Authority, which combats misleading claims, to create a numbering system to be used on printed advertisements: one, the lowest number, would indicate “altered lighting,” whereas the highest number, four, would signify "digital cosmetic surgery." Swinson claims that this system would discourage art directors from digitally enhancing images of women and would alert women to digital enhancements on those images that had in fact been altered.

Although I am wary of any law that limits the implements in the artists’ toolbox, I rather like what the inevitable “rawer photography” would mean for the aesthetics of ads and magazine editorials. The post-production miracles of Pascal Dangin—the Michelangelo of Photoshop­—have no doubt come at the expense of new ideas in image making. I mean, how boring and bland have glossy magazines and advertisements become since the explosions of both cosmetic surgery and digital cosmetic surgery, and since celebrity managers can demand digital modifications, often by the hand of Dangin, in their "press" contracts? For a long time I’ve been hoping for a shift from the mainstream airbrushed-half-naked chick-(minus four ribs)-lying-next-to-a-$2,500-mass-produced-“luxury”-purse spread.

The digital toolbox, while enjoining hundreds of millions of people to dabble in art, has made the average art director lazy. It's easier to do "digital cosmetic surgery" on a so-so image than it is to conceive of something altogether stunning or new. The disclaimer law, if applied vigorously—and I’d rather that it needn’t be applied at all—would encourage new aesthetics and approaches to depicting femininity, reality-based and fantastical. And then perhaps women would once again see the art in advertising, instead of just a catalogue of tricked-out body parts.

 

Tags: airbrushing, celebrity stylists, jo swinson, pascal dangin, photoshop, valerie boyer

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Erika Kawalek is a New York-based journalist and author of the forthcoming fashion chronicle, Ragpicker.

Comments

@xando: "If a man is hiring a

By: you know it is | Wed, 09/30/2009 - 15:11

@xando:

"If a man is hiring a prostitute, looks are paramount. So if you're planning a career in the sex industry, these sorts of touch-ups matter a great deal."

That might be true at the high end. My understanding is that there's a rather broad segment of the sex industry where looks are irrelevant.

It's not about men

By: Xando | Wed, 09/30/2009 - 09:07

If a man is hiring a prostitute, looks are paramount. So if you're planning a career in the sex industry, these sorts of touch-ups matter a great deal.

If a man is planning on spending a good deal of time with a woman, looks matter a great deal less to him than the woman. When a man and his wife go out to dinner, do you really think she's getting dressed up because she's uncertain that she'll be going home with him at the end of the dinner date? Of course not.

She's getting dressed up because it makes her feel more confident. She could wear a burlap sack on the date and her husband would still want to jump her afterwards.

If we're going to 'solve' this problem by imposing some sort of ugliness quotient on magazine photographs, we might as well just have all women wear burkas. In both cases, we're avoiding the key issue: that women judge their looks far more harshly than any man would.

"[Porn] Careers shortened

By: you know it is | Tue, 09/29/2009 - 15:43

"[Porn] Careers shortened [with Blu-Ray] because men don't want to see all the detail on a 22 year old whose been "around" two hundred times."

Aha!

Well that speaks to my speculation about whether men would really care about flaws in the women in glossy photos. Perhaps they would.

There are a number of other

By: you know it is | Tue, 09/29/2009 - 15:41

There are a number of other methods besides digital enhancement and makeup that give the viewer a misleading impression of the true appearance of the subject of the photograph. Push-up bras, (or taped-up breasts for the same effect), tummy-flattening undergarments, hair dye, posterior-sculpting yoga pants...the list of artifices employed to enhance female attractiveness knows no end. (Although clearly in the case of butt-flattering pants, there's no moral foul: the end justifies the means.)

jerseygirl: "I think the

By: you know it is | Tue, 09/29/2009 - 15:38

jerseygirl:

"I think the issue is not only how women feel about themselves, but about how men regard women. If these digitally enhanced models appear to be the ideal, or even the "norm," then don't men come to expect women to be cellulite and wrinkle free?"

I wonder how much impact they really have on men. I suspect the vast majority of consumers of such photos are women: they mostly appear in magazines aimed at women that mostly only women look at. That doesn't mean that the ones that men see don't have some effect on them, but I suspect that the fraction of viewings by men represent a drop in the bucket of the airbrushed photos of women industry. (Then there's also my impression that men tend to be far more forgiving of "imperfections" in the appearance of women than women are, and just generally far more charitable than women about the appearance of woman: men tend to appreciate what's good where women tend to more look for what's bad. In my highly sweepingly generalized own personal impression... But I do wonder if men would really notice, or care, if cellulite and wrinkles started turning up in their photos of attractive women.)

To change the topic slightly (because your comment addresses "imperfections" such as wrinkles and cellulite, different from general attractiveness which I here discuss) I've heard the suggestion that media depictions of attractive women raise men's expectations so high that no woman could meet them, but I'm unconvinced because, as far as I can tell, most men encounter loads of women in real life that they find quite physically attractive, so it's not like captivatingly beautiful women exist only in magazines and not in real life for them.

Oh and betware...

By: mustireallyweighin | Tue, 09/29/2009 - 15:20

....the law of unintended consequences.

Guess what happened to porn with blu-ray? Careers shortened because men don't want to see all the detail on a 22 year old whose been "around" two hundred times.

Fashion mags, if they change (and they won't) will just go after younger more naturally perfect women and shorten (the already short) careers of models. You'll now be done by 18.

Photos

By: mustireallyweighin | Tue, 09/29/2009 - 15:18

As somebody actually in a digital photography program, I find this laughable.

a) A diffusion filter makes people look softer...hell a 300mm lens makes people look different than a 20mm lens.

b) EVERY photo goes through the "digital darkroom". You don't think I have a hundred settings on my camera, a dozen filters and lenses and at least two serious programs that I use for every photo that matters.

They might as well just stick a "4" on every single photo and show how useless this scale really is.

Vocab vulture

By: yossarian | Tue, 09/29/2009 - 14:53

Erika: In paragraph 3, I think you mean "wary" of any law, not "weary."

Since copy editors apparently no longer exist in the online world, writers need to be even more vigilant than before.

Slippery Slope of PhotoShopping Disclosures

By: cmlawyer | Tue, 09/29/2009 - 12:07

Reading a magazine that has a monthly "This is what 46 [or other age] looks like", I have often longed for a disclaimer. How much was the model photo-shopped? How significant is the professional photographer's influence? The professional equipment? The lighting? The (professionally applied) make up? "Routine" care (hair dye?) Cosmetic benefits (like teeth whitening?) Minor cosmetic procedures (injectables or caps?) Major cosmetic procedures (face lift?)Where do you stop the diclosures before we can really get a realistic piture? That said, the French law is a good first step for us to get some sense of relativity.

I've seen cosmetics ads

By: measured | Tue, 09/29/2009 - 11:59

I've seen cosmetics ads already in europe that have disclaimers for say mascara which state, "filmed with inserts and enhanced post-production". I wouldn't purchase the brand advertised, mainly because the ad can't be other than misleading. I think it would be helpful for any potential code to require disclaimers as to what they have actually enhanced by non-cosmetic means, which would exclude traditional make-up but include additions like false eyelashes and certainly digital alteration.

Models are always going to be attractive and most likely stunningly so but at least their beauty is based in reality rather than the fantasy world that digital tools allow.