from the Winnipeg Free Press, Canada
By: Misty Harris
A Canadian media watchdog is calling for restricted use of Photoshop and other methods of digital enhancement in magazines, both in editorial photographs and in advertising.
Media Action’s criticism of the widespread practice of retouching photos — which can include the removal of everything from fat to frown lines on models and celebrities — comes as the United Kingdom’s Periodical Publishers Association launches its own inquiry into industry “Photoshopping.” The association announced plans this week to create a working group with the British Fashion Council and top U.K. magazine editors to discuss a possible ethics code governing the use of computer technology to adjust body appearance.
Shari Graydon, a director at Ontario-based Media Action, says changes to publishing practices regarding such digital wizardry are long overdue.
“Readers have a right to expect authenticity from the photos magazines disseminate,” says Graydon. “If we can’t trust that the images we’re looking at reflect reality, why should we credit the words that appear alongside them with any greater truth?”
Among the suggestions being put forth in the U.K. is to ask magazines to declare which images have been digitally manipulated. Toby Hicks, a spokesman for the Periodical Publishers Association, says they hope a consensus on “best practice” can be reached among the group’s 400 publishing members, but notes that adherence wouldn’t be enforced.
Media Action wants more stringent requirements in Canada. It would have magazines held to the same ethical standards of photojournalism as newspapers, with no digital retouching used beyond techniques such as red-eye reduction. Graydon believes retouched images of models and celebs set up “punishing comparisons” that undermine readers’ self-esteem and contribute to depression and eating disorders.
“These visual half-lies can’t be justified, and it’s only a matter of time before public outrage about the consequences becomes loud enough to force greater responsibility,” says Graydon.
The controversy around photo retouching reached fever pitch last year when Jezebel.com published before-and-after photos of a Redbook magazine cover featuring Faith Hill. The blog post, viewed roughly 1.1 million times, revealed the country singer had been digitally downsized — everything from back fat to arm girth — and tweaked to near comical proportions: crow’s feet erased, under-eye bags removed, clavicle softened, derriere slimmed, skin tone altered.
Similarly, actress Keira Knightley spoke out in 2006 against the way U.S. movie posters for King Arthur depicted her with digitally altered breasts: “Those things certainly weren’t mine,” she scoffed in an interview about her computer-enhanced cup size.
Lisa Tant, editor-in-chief of Canada’s Flare magazine, says any fashion periodical that claims not to retouch photos is lying. At her magazine, computers are used to “enhance” a person’s natural appearance through such things as the softening of under-eye bags or smoothing of acne scars.
But Tant hastens to add that there are limits: “It’s not up to us to recreate their nose or make them look 20 pounds thinner or 20 pounds heavier.”
In 2005, Newsweek came under fire for slapping Martha Stewart’s head on a thinner woman’s body to give the appearance the daytime diva lost weight in prison. Similarly, Kate Winslet slammed British GQ when the magazine drastically downsized the actress’s physique for a 2003 cover.
In an industry that often lives and dies by its covers — which are “seen as more about marketing than about anything remotely resembling photojournalism,” according to Advertising Age columnist and veteran magazine editor Simon Dumenco — retouching overkill is no surprise.
“A lot of celebrity faces are already sort of Photoshopped even before the first click of the shutter,” says Dumenco, referring to Botox, nose jobs and other cosmetic tweaks.
“The subjects are selling fantasy, the photographers are selling fantasy, the editors are selling fantasy, the publishers are selling fantasy. Everybody’s complicit. So the thinking is, what’s the harm in pushing the quest for perfection a little further?”
– Canwest News Service
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