Slashdot Mirror
French Deputies Want Labels On Photo-Altered Models
Psychophrenes writes "A number of French deputies are proposing to pass a law requiring all published photos that were modified by means of an image manipulation program to include a statement indicating that 'the photo was altered in order to modify the appearance of a person.' This indication is to be mandatory on all ads, packaging images, political posters and even art photos, and is considered a matter of public health, aimed at fighting anorexia." The related article is in French, but Google Translate does a pretty good job.
It might be a little annoying reading a porn magazine which has the text "'the photo was altered in order to modify the appearance of a person." thrown all over it.
But does this apply to persons only? I hope we'd finally get to know the truth about McDonalds hamburgers. Or can we count them as persons?
Isn't the very act of scanning and printing using a computer a digital modification?
What if the camera's software tweaked the lighting or white-balance as the picture was being taken?
If all photographs are labeled, then the label becomes meaningless.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
But does this apply to persons only? I hope we'd finally get to know the truth about McDonalds hamburgers. Or can we count them as persons?
Well, maybe they were at one time...
âoeAny society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.
Good thing I don't live in France, because if this law were to pass, I'd have to admit to all my friends that this picture of my girlfriend was actually altered.
Assuming the law only applies to "significant" digital retouching, will we see a resurgence in non-digital techniques to make people look skinnier on film?
After all, we had skinny people in magazines long before the 1990s.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
if this is taken seriously. Didn't the Dove commercial show that anyone can be "modified" to become a superstar?
All movies pretty much would have to have this notice tagged at the bottom right corner of the screen, as well as all advertisement posters.
I won't be surprised if this is not repealed soon.
f that in the a.
Let's assume that this was even effective for the purpose. The text would become so omni-present to basically become meaningless. In one sense or another, every ad will somehow be "manipulated." Even if that means merely cropping the person's body to only have the head, blurring people in the background, etc.
The other issue is who is going to enforce that right? France? An individual on behalf of France? A private right of enforcement? In any event, a company will put that notice on any ad simply to avoid being sued/fined.
Why not make it mandatory to label surgically altered models also? I want to know the boobies I look at are all natural.
Two all-beef Patties, Special Scott and Lester Cheese picking bunions on a Sesame Street Bus?
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Maybe a hat or tee-shirt should be required for anyone wearing make-up in public just so that it doesn't women (and some men) to hate their complexion!
f that in the a.
*checks for disclaimer before f'ing*
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Why not? That creates a false impression that can't be healthy for young girls, right? They already ban deodorant and shaving under the arms, so...
men's magazines are full of pictures of... women
women's magazines are full of pictures of... women
except the women in men's magazines are usually well-proportioned in the t&a department
meanwhile, the women in women's magazines are pure heroin chic: ribs showing, no curves. yuck
i really don't know why, but for some reason the female standard of feminine beauty (as opposed to the male standard of feminine beauty) is starvation porn. women for some reason or another think the ideal female form is that of a prebuscent boy
as for the magazine industry "creating" or "feeding" this phenomenon: no, if it didn't appeal to women on some level, the magazine wouldn't sell. media and consumer exist in co-dependency. media follows what its audience wants, for obvious reasons: $. (as an aside, this simple truth should dispel the whole idea of media-created trends on a whole number of other issues that some people believe: its the audience, not the media, stop blaming the media)
if you want to know what men want and like in the female form, it is well-established fact, biological fact, not cultural, that men prefer women who are heck of a lot more well-fed than what women see as an ideal
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_of_Willendorf
the whole scary skinny trend in high fashion is created by, and perpetuated by, and invested in, by women, not men. yes, there are few strange men who actually prefer their women to be unfeminine stick figures, but these men are not the norm
so girls, listen up, from the male perspective of beauty: go fix yourself a sammich. its your fellow women that want you to waste away, and on some archaic level we don't understand, its your own strange female mind that wants you to be so skinny, not us men
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Imagine the kudos that would come about and the prized badge that a few pics without this tag would hold. It's time people were no longer brainwashed into this aspiration for what is clearly not possible without a few layers of photoshop. We'd all be a bit nicer to each other and ourselves if we started to accept the fact that no-one is perfect.
As a graphic designer, allow me to simplify things - EVERY image published has been altered with photo manipulation software. Whether it's as minimal as colour adjustment or removing some insignificant blemishes from the image to outright "enhancing" of the image. EVERY image has been manipulated. Trust me.
I've seen photographs where altering the white balance, brightness, contrast, and gamma can make a light-skinned Black person look White and make a White person look Black. This is especially true in black-and-white photography.
I remember at least one instance in the last 20 years where an American politician used a picture of his opponent and the ad mad the opponent look much lighter or darker than he looks in person in normal room light. There was some backlash charging the campaign with race-baiting or something like that.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I was thinking of lenses and other optics, but driving actresses into anorexic starvation is actually more sinister. Plus it does exactly what the law is intended to stop.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Right-on, France!
I don't know if such a law can even work, but just the fact that this kind of thing is even being considered is really cool.
My fellow male geeks don't truly get what girls go through and what a mind-job it does on them. But there IS one example which might resonate. . .
Remember when all those new Star Wars toys came out, and all the characters you once identified with were now PuMpEd up? I know it affected me in a negative way, and I thought I was fairly impervious to such things. I found it surprising and illuminating.
Advertising and media stereotypes fuck you in the head. Remember: Body hair was at one time not considered ugly on a woman. It wasn't until quite recently that this changed when a razor-blade company decided to start equating dirtiness with body-hair on women. Doubled the number of customers for its product. This was only a century or two ago.
Fuck advertising. Rock-on France! If it wasn't for Sarkozy and the creep of evil, France would be the true hero of the world.
-FL
Actually in Australia for many years Playboy and Penthouse published nude photos with women's genitals airbrushed smooth to look like a Barbie doll. That created a generation of women that think something is wrong with them and that they should have bits cut off.
What are the odds of NOT finding a doctored photo? And shouldn't people always be wary of what they perceive in any advertisement?
Seems like the longer our democracies go on, the more bureaucratic and insane they start becoming. This isn't "fascism," this isn't the will of the people being usurped, this is the system working as it should, and these are the results.
It seems to me that democracy results in a sort of populistic legalism where you have thousands and thousands of little laws trying to create the perfect existence. But you can't make a perfect existence by putting strings on everyone and letting everyone else play everyone else's puppet master. Nobody can know even a fraction of the laws, yet break one that gets enforced and you're fined or jailed or forced into temporary involuntary servitude. Democracy may be freedom of the masses, but it's not freedom of the individual. The machine may be free to operate but the cogs are not free to turn. Is that really how you envision a free society?
And once we start trying to plug every possible hole that could cause mental illness or otherwise undesirable behavior we become an even more nightmarish version of Brave New World, where instead of people being conditioned by birth the governments ("the people") try to heavily restrict and control all social influences because of the undesirability of emotional problems in society, the end result being an overall loss of individual autonomy and in particular freedom of speech.
not Photoshop. As long as fashion models have to be under normal weight to be accepted for the top fashion shows and magazines, young girls will follow this role model and that is the real problem, not photoshopping bad skin. If you type "anorexic models" into any search engine you find a lot of gruesome stories about girls who literally starved themselves to death on the job. Alternatively: force yourself to watch "Fashion TV" for an hour. That's not a new problem ("Twiggy" turned 60 last week, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twiggy) and not one likely to be changed by any law.
Next comes an Autotune warning, and all of a sudden your average local band playing at the bar Friday night is seen in a whole new perspective...
This unbiased moderation brought to you by the Porcine Aviation Group!
1) This two-dimenstional photo is an alteration of the model depicted. The actual model exists in three dimensions and has volume, unlike this photo. Do not attempt to reduce your volume to zero, as it might affect your health.
2) The photo of this model is only 7 inches tall. The actual model is over 5 feet tall. Do not attempt to reduce your height to only 7 inches, as it might affect your health."
Okay, so what if they use CGI? It's becoming more and more easy to just pick a CGI model that looks exactly the way you want it to. Do these "photos" have to have this text too? What about changing background etc?
On a whole different note; I fail to see the connection between altered photos of models and anorexia. Usually they don't make these models more skinny. They might smudge out a navel here or there (models are atomically weird), or make a boob a bit bigger (Emma Watson?) but I seriously doubt they're making models even more skinnier.
Trust me - we lie.
(rather like one of those sci-fi, evil computer killer spells...)
..contact lenses, fake eye lashes and artificial hair. Also, too bad most redheads are not natural.
I'd love to see that mention on Paris-Match pictures of Sarkozy...
For the uninformed, Paris-Match magazine published an altered picture of Nicolas "cocainomaniac chihuahua" Sarkozy.
As a photojournalist, I think it would be interesting to see just how many photos in fashion magazines are airbrushed or otherwise manipulated after the fact. In terms of ethics, I was taught and have come to believe that there are a few "ethical" manipulations -- cropping, limited use of burning and dodging, etc., that you can use while still maintaining the integrity of the original photo. But once you change what was actually there -- whether it's airbrushing the blemishes off a model's face or using the clone stamp tool to take a few pounds off her hips -- you've crossed into photomanipulation. And it's only fair for people to know when this is taking place, IMO.
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
If some PR company tries to spin a bad story, they should be forced to say "The truth has been altered to change the appearance of this corporation".
How is this affecting anyone's rights on line?
Especially when one reads the very first line of the article (emphasis added):
Seems to me this is a tempest in a teapot.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
At least we wouldn't see anymore of those photomanipulations of racial motivation, i.e. when a company decides to replace one person in order to add ethnic diversity to a picture. To overly politically corect minds, there must be people of all ethnic groups in all photos.
A more efficient solution would be to mark only those images actually displaying unmodified people. These days hardly anything is printed without some level of retouching. You'd be surprised about the amount of retouching applied even to images of regular people and politicians before they get printed in newspapers.
I am French, and I am fed up with deputies working on laws of very little interest, rather than discussing the real issues (G20 anyone? Tobin tax? etc).
I'm curious. What should he apologize for? Beck apologizing for merely disagreeing with the President would certainly be a cats-and-dogs-living-together occurrence. I'm not holding my breath waiting for Cindy Sheehan to apologize to the last President for disagreeing with him.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
But does this apply to persons only? I hope we'd finally get to know the truth about McDonalds hamburgers. Or can we count them as persons?
Pictures of burgers are representative of the type of burger you can expect, you do not expect the exact burger that is in the photo otherwise they would have to take a lot of photos!
Good for the French anyway, this can only be a positive thing.
Food styling and photography is at least as complicated as fashion styling and photography. People at least do not dry up, wilt, sag, and turn funny colors over the course of an hour under the lights. Burgers are one of the harder foods to style and photograph. The burgers you see in photographs are not even edible. For some interesting tricks of the food stylist/photographer's trade, see here: http://www.choice.com.au/viewArticle.aspx?id=102996&catId=100406&tid=100008&p=1&title=Food+styling.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
It might be easier to reverse this law:
Any photo that has not been manipulated should indicate that 'the photo was not altered in order to modify the appearance of a person.'
Might be a whole lot cheaper.
Photos dont make people anorexic. They might affect what a society believes is beautiful but if the former was the case, why are more and more people becoming fatter and obese?
Bills like these end up being more a political statement than bills that serve the community. In this case some politicians want to denounce skinny models. Its not relevant. Not having a survey and judging based on my opinion and some others, most of these skinny models look emaciated in person, just not on camera. So if the camera "adds weight" this is what you would expect to sell via beauty. So what?
Kind of like an "organic food" label.
... since the anorexia epidemic is so much greater a problem than the obesity one.
Unfortunately the law is misguided if it intends to stop anorexia. The simple fact is that the vast majority of anorexia cases are caused by childhood sexual abuse. Its the getting f*@%ed by your daddy, not the stereotypes that does it.
Let's apply that to people who wear makeup, as well. Especially those stupid fake moles. Lame.
And shoulder pads, high heels, lifts, toupees, coloured contacts.
Truth, we demand the truth!
Oh, but let's keep letting politicians lie on the floor of the House and Senate about death panels, etc. Yeah, that's okay, because it's "free speech".
I thought France was trying to be more eco friendly. They should require unmodified images to say unmodified. The public is perfectly capable of knowing that all images are modified. However, the rare unmodified images are difficult to spot.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
I can tell from the pixels. And from having seen a lot of photo-altered models in my time.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
Maybe for calling him a racist without a shred of evidence? Or Beck's Nazi imagery used to smear everything the President does? Or the mislabeling of a centrist democrat as a Socialist Communist Islamo-fascist?
There's a lot of things Beck could apologize for saying. Not that he will, it'd be contrary to his persona...he doesn't believe even a tenth part of the tripe he spews, it's all for ratings. Laugh it up, Fox-watchers. You have been royally and professionally trolled.
Wouldn't it be easier to just come out and say all the pictures in those ads have been modified?
Digitization of film or prints is almost never digitizing the actual film or the actual print, it is instead taking a digital photograph of the film or print under lighting conditions determined by the manufacturer.
Taking a digital photograph inherently incorporates decisions made by the manufacturer of the camera or scanner.
Take the same picture with 100 different digital cameras under identical conditions and you'll have 100 slightly different photos, none of which exactly matches what a human observer will see.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
This is totally correct. There's a huge difference between lightening a shadow and artificially removing 20 pounds to show the (false) effects of the latest diet pill or Relaxicizer.
The CB App. What's your 20?
In journalism, you are correct.
In art, advertisement, and entertainment, photographers are far less conservative.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
An anorexic young woman lying on the bed in his room at the Sainte-Anne hospital in Paris 2007
Yep. Spot on.
...in the web-world. While this wouldn't work in print, it should be quite easy to require advertisers, photojournalists &c with published pictures to make available the original content. No label necessary if everyone knows they can right-click on a picture and see the un-retouched version.
For all the people who complain about big brother, I'd rather trust a group whose charter is to protect my interests, and whom I can vote out of office (the gov't) than a group whose only interest is profit. If you don't think that corporations currently fill the role of "big brother", you're fooling yourself. It's only through dynamic opposition that these forces can balance themselves out; neither should exist unchecked by the other.
I personally think this would be a great idea, as it would ensure that any imagery which is not strictly entertainment can be validated by the people to whom the image's message is being conveyed.
The CB App. What's your 20?
Isn't "white balance" all you need to do to make a washed sheet look cleaner?
physical appearance, what drives archetypes of appealing/ unappealing, is open to much cultural influence, but has as its base, both from who is driving the media and who is consuming it, purely biological drives
you can't take a random arbitrarily chosen standard of beauty and impose it on the masses or on children and it will be accepted blindly. the masses/ children will accept that standard which most naturally appeals to them
there is no weird conspiracy to reshape minds. minds are what they are biologically, and can drift this way and that way due to cultural influence, but they can't drift that far. otherwise, what is being pushed as a standard simply gets rejected, and some other form of influence is preferred
feminine standards of beauty, however bizarre they seem to us men, are mostly innate aspects of the biological female mind
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
This is slashdot.. there are no girls
"Reading this magazine may cause weight loss, uncontrollable vomiting and a slim sexy body" Really, serious? children doing hard drugs, parent beating their kids, corporate crime at an all time high and the world economy in the dump and the French come up with this? All I can say is please lets keep this law in France it's the only place I can think of wishing such junk legislation on.
It's not clear that a porn magazine would be covered by this law, but adverts would be. We already have disclaimers in the UK for cosmetics adverts. They are actually quite informative. I saw one recently advertising some kind of shampoo and stating that it "enhanced vibrancy" and the models had ultra-bouncy curled hair, meanwhile the disclaimer at the bottom of the screen actually said something like "note: models did not use the advertised product. Models hair was formed by makeup expert." That kind of information makes a huge difference in how people perceive the advert. I've seen similar disclaimers for skin cream adverts, while the voiceover is saying how amazing the product is, the disclaimer says something like "In independent tests 28% of test subjects reported some improvement"; so now we know that 72% of test subjects reported no improvement with this product! I think the honesty in advertising laws are great, certainly a lot more amusing than the adverts we used to have a few years ago.
Most people have no idea how how much touching up goes on. In the documentary Bigger, Faster, Stronger a photographer from the "protein shake" market is interviewed. He states that he has actually done photoshoots of the "before" (weakling) and "after" (muscleman) photos in the same day. That's right, what the advertiser claims to be some amazing muscle growth effect is actually just photo manipulation. It's completely dishonest. Oh, and the models admit using steroids. They say that if people are stupid enough to actually believe the photos, then they deserve to lose their money. Given the choice between this blatant corruption, where the uneducated and trusting are lied to and exploited for financial gain, and a regulated market, I'll choose regulation.
If you are going to insist on enforcing "Truth in labeling", how about starting with politician's promises, instead of fashion magazine's pictures? Of course, in both cases, the public already knows that what they are seeing bears no relationship whatsoever to the truth.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
The problem as I see it is that images that have not had some kind of manipulation, say, exposure and white balance, are exceedingly rare. Being government (and French...) you know there won't be a reasonable definition of "altered", which means the notice must be included on all photos, hence making the message meaningless.
Your (or someone's) tax dollars at work.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
"Warning: The original photo was of a Polish woman. But we French hate Poles because they take our jobs. So we make her look French by airbrushing in additional body hair."
How will the users of 4chan respond to this?
I'd be investing in makeup, beauty surgery, facelifts, w/e the crap they do at spas, creams, lotions, oils, exercise equipment, drugs.
Given enough free time and money models can look better than regular humans anyways without the need to photoshop. Or the notice will become so passe that it will be invisible and it wont change a thing. Perhaps pushing for some education in school? Maybe make everyone in school watch that dove commercial, it is cool short and holds even kids attention.
Don't you get it? IT is about MEN. As a woman I can tell you most girls are taught by their mothers to find that perfect guy, and the biggest no no is getting too plump. So yeah the healthier ones take yoga, aerobics, tai-chi to get fit whereas some girls take the edict to the extreme. Kinda like sexy cigarette smoking by men. Most guys think that it makes them Jude Law, but to most of us they just stink and aren't really good to kiss. Is that brought on by guys alone? Or the pressure of conformity created by society?
There is no simple ooh this and ooh that rule for human behavior. All of us are complex entities, so never underestimate the human mind. Further, even your 'rational' world view is tied to your emotions. So, the world really isn't black and white is it?
Start looking around you without a running commentary in your head. Observe and then hypothesize not the other way around it tends to produce biased results.
P.S. - My CAPTCHA word was flashed...
6.8SPC TR of 550, l xwind at 6, drift rt at 26" drops 77". AT has 503 ft-lbs at 1403 fps. FT 0.86
Do you really think news images are unaltered? EVERY news picture is altered. It was the case when I worked with film, and it's the case with everyone today working with digital realm. No photo is perfect, and photographers regularly alter exposure - in film using dodge/burn (yes, those are actual actions, not just funny names for photoshop widgets) to change the appearance of subjects, make forgrounds standout, bring details out of shadows, suppress (or enhance) unflattering areas, limit the tonal range for repro, and on and on.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
... coming from the country where the president forbids anyone taller than him from appearing in the photo ops: http://www.gala.fr/l_actu/on_ne_parle_que_de_ca/buzz_video_nicolas_sarkozy_toise_ses_amis_186996
I think this is a sensible law.
Whether right or wrong, regardless if it's pyschological... the fact is, a lot of youngsters attempt to make themselves appear as their favorite media icon. Often, it might even lead to self-destructive consequences, such as body modifications. But, most importantly it alters OUR view of the world and how we should look.
Modifying appearances for all models on TV and prints have been long sought after. Even in the twenties, the dramatic scenes in black and white where there was a single ray of light illuminating a portion of the actors face... to the careful coordination between the camera angles and the choreography to make sure the actors look fit and sexy despite their gut. The industry has tons of tricks... and image modification is only one more in their toolbox. Truthfully, Marilyn Manson, Brittany Spears... both have rather artsy modeling pics... but the reality is, neither one is particularly "model humans" without all those professionals telling them what to do. They quite literally can create a sex icon of any of us.
Now, to play devil's advocate. I personally think Marylin Manson makes a fine musician. Had it not been for all of this makeup and fancy photographs... would he have been able to get as far as he did? There are a lot of very good musicians that don't have hard bodies, and their music should be appreciated all the same.
But, I think the damage, overall for youngsters and adults (who aren't willing to admit that they view themselves in comparison to those they view day and night on TV and in Magazines) who are comparing their selves to these photos... they should be informed that the photos aren't real and are in all respect impossible.
Given the fact that current french president bought/married a top(less) model, I'd like to know what he thinks of this project of law.
Most of the comments here are annoying riffs on the theme, "I can read the word 'manipulation' in a pedantically absurd way and pretend there is no distinction". In fact, law and courts can use common sense, definitions, and human reasoning. They are not constrained to crudely written algorithms (even sophisticated algorithms could do better than most posts here allow, but that's a digression too).
As TFA says, photojournalism already has a fairly well defined standard about what "modifications" are merely technical versus which alter the meaning of the material presented. Part of this is a question of particular transformations that may or may not be applied, but much of it is a matter of judgment about meaning. Clearly, at the edges, you can try to subvert some overly narrow and hyper-technical construal. For example, Man Ray (and other photographers of the early 20th C) created some strikingly abstract and recontextualizing images using only techniques that would no per-se bump against the technical "modification" techniques... his purpose was obviously much different than fashion magazines, but if a modern photographer applies the same devices, the law and courts would reasonably call that "manipulation" within the spirit of the proposed law (whether labeling was required would presumably depend on the publication context). On the flip side, there are no doubt other photographs that could be "manipulated" in a formal sense without intending to present artificial meaning. For example, photos (digital or film) that are damaged in various ways might need to be "manipulated" to produce the "true" image. Again, courts and laws can make that distinction on a case-by-case basis.
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Because many fashion designers are pedophile homosexuals who fantasize about fucking 10 year old boys? Just a theory.
Based on the varying number of comments that SlashDot articles gets, one can tell that many here at /. are primary interested in developments in wiretapping/surveillance laws and champion anti-DRM causes/the Linux kernel.
This quote illustrates the mindset of human nature I am referring to: "An enemy generally says and believes what he wishes." -- Thomas Jefferson
Furthermore, even "gray area" can be part of law, thanks to an amazing technology called "courts."
Trouble is with courts, they are an extremely expensive game to play, even if you win, with no guarantee that they won't enforce a silly decision.
Consequently, any publisher in their right mind will probably just play it safe and spam the "manipulated image" warning across everything that has been so much as gamma-corrected and sharpened. It will lose all meaning except as a joke on the cover of rap CDs.
I have a counter proposal: put image manipulation on the school curriculum. Have some glamour photographers go into schools, ask the teenagers to nominate the most pug-ugly kid in the class, take a photo and photoshop him/her into a supermodel. Then take an unmanipulated photo of the fittest kid in the school and show the two side-by-side. Maybe, just maybe the little darlings will get the clue. (There are high-street stores that do this - except they don't provide the comparison. I even remember some woman on a consumer program complaining that they made her wash off her "makeover" before leaving - obviously didn't realise that they'd trowelled on so much theatrical slap that she'd have frightened small kids if seen in daylight).
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
Does this mean Oswald's picture with the newspaper and rifle will contain a warning that it was altered?
*Puts on tinfoil hat*
I'm a satanic clam.
I think it should be taken a step further. There should be a warning on all advertising, no matter the medium, that says something like, "Soak this in at your own risk. Modern advertising is known to make you fat and stupid"
Men are just seeing a photo of a woman, and imagine it naked, want ot have sex, trigger reproduction system, etc...etc... Whereas women want to have the youth of the woman photographied. What are the attribute of youth ? Slim, no tits, no fat. Now I might be wrong, since this is only a gut feeling, but it make much more sense than anything I heard on why women have hunger-fed chicks in their mags.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
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The popularity of the stick-figure female model built like a boy in early pubescence is due to the prevalence of gay male designers in the fashion industry. They like skinny young boys, and so they want women to be as close to that ideal as possible. That, at least, is my theory.
It's not just the media, and it's not just women. I have had multiple 'health experts' tell me that I should be working off of BMI to gauge my proper weight. According to the BMI, I don't reach a 'normal' weight until I am down to 176. At 177 pounds the BMI declares me 'overweight'. Now, I have recently been hydrostatically weighed, so I know that I have 165 pounds of lean body mass. That means that to be considered 'normal' by the health industry, I have to get down to something like 6% body fat. That is just to barely sqeeze into what they consider 'normal'. The normal range for my height (5'11") goes all the way down to 132 pounds. That would require not only 0% body fat, but also the actual amputation of body parts to reach.
This is all with virtually no exercise. Based on how quickly my body builds muscle, it is not unthinkable that with moderate exercise, my lean body mass could edge up over the 176 pounds that the 'health professionals' call 'normal'.
If I take their advice, I literally face the risk of dieing due to low body weight while the 'health industry' calls me fat.
So, blame the media if you want... Blame the consumers if you want... Until the doctors and health insurance companies stop telling perfectly normal people that they are fat and obese, I blame them.
If only putting an "altered" label was mandatory on pictures where people were added or removed, or where the real location the picture was taken was hidden... this still happens. Such labels would effectively defend The People against The State.
If this is limited to anorexia and top models, and is not applied to photoshopped Sarkozy pictures (as someone else mentionned in this thread) this is only stupid dictatorial and bureaucratic bullshit.
Votez ecolo : Chiez dans l'urne !
You really don't have a clue to how laws are written. And you certainly don't understand that France and Europe uses a totally different system of law NOT comparable with your Anglo-American Common Law.
Laws are actually NOT written to be clear and precise but to have room to "include" interpretations [under the French/European Code Civil/Roman Law).
In fact some systems of European law include "guidelines" to illustrate what the intent and application of the law is to clarify any later disputes. It's very different from how YOUR laws are made and used.
I'm a European lawyer.
"... Doubled the number of customers for its product. This was only a century or two ago"
I very much doubt that it was "only a century or two ago." I don't think many women removed their body hair in 1800, or 1850, or even 1900. More likely, it was a marketing gimmick in the post-war years, when Edward Bernais got up to his clever tricks.
if you lick and inhale these, you could get cancer, you should know when they're in abundance
Shall I go ahead and mass-produce labels "t*ts may have been photographically altered?"
I can see the point, but I really don't think this is something you can fix with a law.
Insert
Ah, you finally said something truthful in the last line of your post. Well, except for the "professional" part.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
"Some people are reportedly so allergic to peanuts that being in the same room with someone who has handled a peanut sometime in the last day emanates enough peanut fumes to kill or significantly harm them."
Based on the fact that people aren't dropping dead in malls, on the sidewalk, on the bus, etc... Either these people don't exist, or they live in a bubble. If you have ever seen a toddler eat peanut butter, you would know that it is EVERYWHERE... Personally, I don't believe these people exist. Instead, mothers who lack sufficient drama in their lives exist.
... appears to be spreading throughout French culture faster than the hini flu.
The IPCC has purposely engineered a massive scientific fraud.
What if we could see the originals? Now -that- would truly be interesting. Not just a disclaimer saying a picture's been altered.. that could be anything. What if we could see -exactly- what has been altered?
I know there's websites out there that show some of these as examples - though usually from enthusiasts taking a celeb's pic and fancying that up, and not from actual published material.
I'd find it fascinating to see what was altered between two pictures of a person, or pictures of a mobile device (they already have disclaimers here stating that the image on the device's screen has been simulated; i.e. it's never quite that crisp/bright) and, indeed, as mentioned way at the top of the comments thread... food shots - although those usually aren't altered, just rigged from the get-go.
While we're at it, on albums let's put "This performance has been digitally altered." That way, other musicians won't unknowningly look up to singer's who are naturally out of tune and drummers who can't play in time.
Sound ridiculous? Yes.
Actually it should read: American Slashdot readers don't understand much about anything.
The suggestion is perfectly reasonable, the intent is good and the application would also be reasonableÂ[under the French system of law].
It would NOT include any and all manipulation, the actualy draft and suggestion is much clearer. And French judges are not like American judges - they have very different roles and powers!
Programmers make TERRIBLE "lawyers"! Especially for legal systems they DON'T know!
I am a European lawyer.
Doctored photos are good for the health of models. If a photo can be doctored to look like it is of an anorexic model it would save the actual model a lot of trouble. I know I know, this will ultimately lead to the unemployment of thousand of girls who have no talent but that of regurgitating every ounce of there lunch and walking short distances. Oh well, all good things must come to an end.
We are talking about France here, not the USA.
Like Olympus cameras.. see the grunpy editors experience with hugin and the discussion of distortion at the bottom of http://lwn.net/Articles/351053
and avoid crap likey Olympus cameras.
You can always try to make a color copy of some money - don't forget to zoom! because, yes all the pictures are labeled. just not for your benefit.
The logical next step is requiring warning labels on women wearing padded bras.
If the photographer uses a wide-angle lens and get really close so that proportion is distorted, is that manipulation or is it just a photo? If he uses a diffusion filter to hide some minor skin flaws, is that manipulation? How about polarizers, graduated filters, extra lighting? What about solarizing, overexposing, underexposing, cropping, dodge-and-burn, or any of the other tricks that have been done in the darkroom long before anyone had even thought of using a computer to manipulate photos? I can imagine a resurgence in the "old school" techniques so that an ad agency can say "that's how it came off the camera, it's not manipulated at all!" while continuing to do exactly what they've been doing since the days of tintypes.
Mal-2
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
Maybe the law should not mandate it for images that are obviously manipulated.
Like the ones posted to this site.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
I hope we'd finally get to know the truth about McDonalds hamburgers. Or can we count them as persons?
"There are forty people in the world and five of them are hamburgers."
Squirrel!
"This picture has been manipulated. The French president appears considerably taller than he is in real life."
(Heaven help us when there are French leaders who have issues with their height.)
Since all photos are generally sharpened and contrast adjusted for printing, all photos would need the disclaimer. It will look silly on photos with no people in them....
Blah blah blah. I hear this crap all the time, it happens just as much with boys. You supposed to be tanned and toned, look like a linebacker, have just the right hair, jaw needs to be this shape, etc.
You're right when you note highschool populations today.
It's become more intense over the years for men. How old are you? I was born in the very early Seventies, and I remember being blithely unaware of body image demands until I was in my mid teens. And even then, it didn't penetrate very deeply and I was happy enough to simply go through life without worrying too much about the shape of my body. This seemed to be the case with all virtually the guys I knew, whereas many of the girls I grew up with were obsessing about body image, were on 'diets', trying to stuff themselves into tight jeens, etc. Fat girls were made fun of while fat guys were big-boned. That's how I remember it.
But that was quite some years ago now. The body image messages seem to have been ramped up all over the media spectrum, and it seems very likely that body-image messages are more equally aimed at both sexes today.
Rambo and Ahhnold became media icons in the mid-80's, while we had Steve McQueen in the 60's and Harrison Fords and other guys in the 70's who were masculine but who were not PuMpEd up. Whereas for women, big boobs, long legs and thin waists have been in vogue for that whole period, and expressed in media loudly.
I'm not interested in working out who the bigger victims are. Victim culture is bullshit. --I don't have any patience for women who direct anger at me because of social injustices I had nothing to do with. But that doesn't prevent me from recognizing facts.
-FL
See http://www.realwomen.org.uk/