14 DAY TRIAL // The American Medical Association is taking a stand against industry practice of photoshopping already thin models into impossibly stick-thin women. Having unrealistic images like these in the media is the main cause of eating disorders and body-image issues in teens and young women, the AMA says.
As such, it’s making a step in the right direction even though, as DigitalLife point out, it has “no teeth in the matter,” in the sense that it can only recommend and offer guidelines.
The AMA has announced a new policy and, according to it, it’s urging the media and the fashion industry to stop altering photographs in unrealistic ways because it’s sending across the wrong message.
“Advertisers commonly alter photographs to enhance the appearance of models’ bodies, and such alterations can contribute to unrealistic expectations of appropriate body image – especially among impressionable children and adolescents,” the group says in a statement cited by the aforementioned e-zine.
There is a clear correlation between negative body image, eating disorders and the images that make it in print, be it in magazines, on billboards or shown on other channels.
At least photos targeting the younger segment of costumers should not be altered beyond recognition and, most importantly, in a manner that no longer has anything to do with reality.
“A large body of literature links exposure to media-propagated images of unrealistic body image to eating disorders and other child and adolescent health problems,” the AMA underlines.
Fashion giants like Ralph Lauren, Victoria’s Secret and Ann Taylor have often come to international attention and ridicule after they altered models’ bodies until they looked abnormal – and many continue to do so to this day.
Because of this, the AMA set out to encourage the “public and private sector organization concerned with child and adolescent health to develop guidelines for advertisements, especially those appearing in teen-oriented publications, that would discourage the altering of photographs in a manner that could promote unrealistic expectations of appropriate body image,” the group adds.
As noted above, while AMA’s word doesn’t weigh that heavily in the balance, the stance it takes comes at the right time, just as the digital alteration of media images was starting to get completely out of control.