France and U.K Consider Warning Labels on Digitally Altered Photos

Actress Jessica Alba in an ad, before and after Photoshopping

In an effort to reduce the perceived effects models with unrealistic bodies have on young women who see them in ads, lawmakers in France and Great Britain are mulling a series of proposals that would require doctored advertisements to carry disclaimers.

According to Jo Swinson, one of the members of the British Parliament who is pushing for advertisement legislation, “when teenagers and women look at these pictures in magazines, they end up feeling unhappy with themselves.” France’s Valerie Boyer wants to take it one step further. For ads that fail to signify they’ve been retouched, she has proposed high fines – from $50,000 to half the price of the advertisement.

Of course, photo manipulation is nothing new. When the medium was developed 170 years ago there may not have been computer tools to change faces, but that didn’t stop people from trying. The first documented case goes all the way back to the 1860s, when a picture of Abraham Lincoln was altered with just ink, glue and scissors. Since then the ability to manipulate images has become almost an art form in itself. Most magazines now make ample use of cropping, air-brushing and Photoshopping to create images that are more-or-less completely different from their originals.

As image editing technology has risen in recent years, so have controversies. In an ad for the 2004 film King Arthur, actress Keira Knightley was given a chest bump by producers looking to increase sex appeal. Some ads even attempt to change skin color. In a photo for one of cosmetic giant L’oreal’s campaigns, singer Beyonce was famously “retouched” as a much paler, whiter version of herself.

Many critics, like Swinson and Boyer, claim this sort of retouching of female models in order to give them leaner bodies, clearer (or whiter) skin and bigger busts sets an unfair, unrealistic example for young women. This, they argue, can also lead to self-esteem disorders such as anorexia and bulimia.

However, airbrushing and other post-production techniques are so widely used and accepted in media that little is likely to change if legislation is passed. The question then becomes, if image-editing is indeed its own art from, what sort of responsibilities does it have to its viewers? In other words, should we really expect a photograph to tell the truth?