Airbrushing bad ads from public life
Topic: Political Correctness
Source: Spiked
Author: Nathalie Rothschild
A group of academics, doctors and psychologists has argued that airbrushed images promote unrealistic expectations of perfect body images. In a paper supported by 44 academics, and overseen by the Liberal Democrats as part of their broader campaign against the use of airbrushed or retouched images in advertisements, the group claims that these images encourage eating disorders and self-harm amongst girls in particular, but boys, too. The idea that altered images of fit men will have insecure boys reaching for their steroid shots, or that seeing pictures of impossibly skinny women will have girls sticking two fingers down their throats, displays a rather crude understanding of how advertising affects people, and a complete disregard for the intellect and resilience of young people. Advertisements reflect ideals that are grounded in contemporary social relations, aesthetics and material needs. Such ideals cannot be airbrushed from society or negotiated through quibbling over what sort of pictures are acceptable and which are not. (11/11/09)