French Legislator Proposes Law to Reveal Photo Retouching in Ads
Valerie Boyer, a member of the French Parliament, has introduced legislation that will require advertisements that have been retouched to be clearly labeled as such.
Some think such a law would destroy photographic art; some think it might help reduce anorexia; some say the idea is aimed at the wrong target, given that nearly every advertising photograph is retouched. Others believe such a label might sensitize people to the fakery involved in most of the advertising images with which they're bludgeoned.
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For Ms. Boyer, who has a background in health administration, the fight is really about her two teenage daughters, 16 and 17, and the pressures on young women to match the fashionable ideal of a thin body and perfect skin.
"I got interested in the subject of the body because it's really a mother's reflection," she said. "It's the closeness I have to adolescents that drove me to become interested in these subjects."
It is a topic that consumes her. "If someone wants to make life a success, wants to feel good in their skin, wants to be part of society, one has to be thin or skinny, and then it's not enough -- one will have his body transformed with software that alters the image, so we enter a standardized and brainwashed world, and those who aren't part of it are excluded from society."
Her proposed law has yet to be voted on in the National Assembly, where Ms. Boyer sits as a member of the center-right from heavily Socialist Marseille. The legislation is aimed at advertising, though its preamble suggests expanding the measure to other kinds of photographs. Her initiative has already brought her attention, as part of a larger, passionate and confused debate about models, beauty and anorexia.
The debate has been quite heated, with passions high on both sides of the debate. The photos in question are advertising products and in many countries are already subject to false advertising laws. In England, companies have been slapped down hard for using fake lashes and hair extensions in ads for products that claim to give similar results for consumers who don't have the benefit of fake hair.
In the U.S., all magazine covers, features and ads are so heavily photoshopped that a law like that would result in disclaimers on just about every page of every magazine. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Maybe teenagers would then realize that what they see in the magazines is quite unrelated to reality. The rest of us already know that.
