Today's New York Times had an article titled, "Sex, Lies and Photoshop" about the amount of retouching that occurs in today's magazines, and how hard the magazine industry is fighting to keep it all on the down-low.
I'm sure everyone has bigger fish to fry, but I would love for someone to step up and hold magazines to the same level of accountability that they do advertisers, pharmaceutical companies, hell, even cigarette manufacturers. Unlike these businesses mentioned, who must diligently report side effects, special effects and any tampering whatsoever, magazines do not have to report (or in any way acknowledge) that an image has been retouched. The rationale being that re-touching falls under the heading of artistic license. Ridiculous!
The fact is that these magazines make millions of dollars selling a beauty ideal that doesn't exist. The women in these photos (already genetically aberrant) are then slenderized, their eyes enlarged, their limbs lengthened, their teeth whitened and their skin rendered flawless. If the photo manipulators wanted to hang that on a wall in a gallery - that would be artistic. But, as we all know, these images aren't meant to be artistic in the classic sense (with some notable exceptions, Annie Liebowitz and Helmut Newton spring to mind).
The negative ramifications of the increasingly unattainable images in these magazines have been repeatedly pointed out in the sky-rocketing rates of eating disorders and body dis-morphia. I am not asking the fashion industry to change their methods, I am asking for a small asterisk on the bottom right hand side of the page stating, "Photo has been retouched". Why is that too much to ask?
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