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Israel Passes Photoshop Law To Combat Anorexia
Hugh Pickens writes "The Atlantic reports that the Israeli parliament has passed legislation that prohibits fashion media and advertising with models who fall below the World Health Organization's standard for malnutrition banning underweight models as determined by Body Mass Index. The new law also stipulates that any ad which uses airbrushing, computer editing, or any other form of Photoshop editing to create a slimmer model must clearly state that fact. Advertising campaigns created outside of Israel must comply with the legislation's standards in order to appear in Israel. 'I realized that only legislation can change the situation,' says Rachel Adato, an Israeli parliament member with a background in medicine. 'There was no time to educate so many people, and the change had be forced on the industry. There was no time to waste, so many girls were dieting to death.' The measure has been controversial within Israel for raising the question of where free speech bumps up against the fashion industry's responsibility — and its possible harm — to its customers' psychological well-being. Donald Downs, a professor at the University of Wisconsin and an expert on the First Amendment, says that it would be very tough to pass something like Israel's law in the US Congress. 'In the US, it would be hard to justify this type of law on either legal or normative policy grounds,' says Downs. 'The Israeli law is paternalistic in that it prohibits something because of the effect it might have on others in the longer term.'"
I've seen a paper about it: the most significant contributor to anorexia is social context, specially advertising. The fashion industry is, therefore, responsible for what they put on ads. I fail to see what's the issue here: it's common knowledge that "free speech" doesn't mean "free to say whatever you want". If they put an ad with underweight, photoshopped models, then they are harming everyone who's watching, in a medical sense, and must refrain from doing so.
I rarely respond to comments. Also, don't ask for clarifications: a brain and Google are faster, believe me!
What BMI range will be acceptable for models?
If you truly believe that BMI is an accurate measure of somebody's overall health, you have some learning to do. It's simply a ratio of a person's weight to their height. It does not take into account the fact that muscle mass is denser than fat mass, nor does it consider other factors like bone density (which can be an indicator of good health, even though it will increase your BMI).
This isn't about encouraging "fat fucks", this is about realizing that a size 0 is unhealthy, especially on a woman who's 5'11". Magazines have been promoting an impossible image of what the ideal woman actually looks like for decades, and any attempts at self-policing have largely failed. Photoshop just makes it worse, because they can take somebody who's actually really beautiful in real life, and make her "better"... It's airbrushing for the 21st century.
By the standards of the fashion industry, I'm morbidly obese... *gasp* she wears a size 12?!?! By any rational standard, however, my weight is exactly where it should be for a woman of my size. I'm fit and healthy, and that's all that matters. Women come in different shapes and sizes, and they need to promote that realism. It's a sad state of affairs that porn is the only place you can find realistically proportioned women in print, and that's because their buyers are usually interested in different... attributes....
>>>If you truly believe that BMI is an accurate measure of somebody's overall health, you have some learning to do
Let's suppose he's a doctor.
How much more learning does he need?
You still think you know more than the doctors in the WHO and AMA who publish these BMI figures?
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
There's actually a rather direct connection between the obesity epidemic and the presentation of skeletally thin models as a standard of beauty. An awful lot of basically healthy teenage girls try to starve themselves into looking like models, inevitably fail (girls who become models are already naturally very thin, even before they start the starvation diets) and "rebound" and end up weighing more than they did before. (Starvation sets off all kinds of nasty reactions in the body, and one of the things it does is encourage the body to pack on as much fat as possible when food becomes plentiful again; this made sense for our ancestors, living in times of feast alternating with famine, but it's terrible in the modern world.) After a few cycles of this, they end up with deeply screwed up metabolisms and lifelong problems maintaining a healthy weight. I don't know how much of the modern obsesity problem is attributable to this phenomenon, but I'm guessing it's a non-trivial amount.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Considering this story is about Israel, you sound even sillier than you crazy conservatives usually do. Those aren't just promises. Education is free, healthcare co-pays aren't just cheap but are merely symbolic, and pensions still exist. Oh, and they still maintain a massive military budget, and don't owe China their firstborn.
Your move.
There should be no Free Speech for non-humans. A corporation does not have any political or human rights necessities for Free Speech because a) all the humans that make up the corporation already have that right and b) it isn't human, so human rights don't apply.
I understand the line needs to be defined and corporations will circumvent the issue by paying people to make their speech for them - but the law is pretty good at wiping the floor with people too obviously circumventing it.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Since they are not,
ORLY? http://photoblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/02/23/6115591-palestinian-house-inside-cage-in-jewish-settlement?lite
Best I can tell, fashion models are aimed at women. It's women who buy these things and all the fashion models look like young boys. I find it amazing how men are still blamed for this. Check out porn stars. That's what men want. They aren't boney little skin bags. This is a problem created by women for women.
In my opinion (based, largely, by watching discussions here), the most important law in the Israeli law-book is called "the law of financing of parties". Basically, it prohibits any politician from accepting a large (the limit, I think, is around 10K nis, which are about $3000) from a single person or body.
I know from first hand experience that you can set up a meeting with at least some of Israel's Knesset members, discuss an issue on its merits, and have a fair-game chance of convincing them. I have been involved, with no more capacity than being a random member of the public, with the copyright overhaul effort that took place a few years ago. We (myself and one lawyer from the Israeli chapter of the Internet society) were the sole opposing voices in a room literally choking full of lawyers representing all major players in both software and music industries.
Our voices were heard, and on more than one occasion, accepted. This included some issues that any regular slashdot reader should easily identify as core, such as the fact that the final law, as passed, does not include DMCA like anti-circumvention provisions (which the Federation for Phonorecords tried to introduce), as well as having explicit fair use statements for allowing certain (rather wide) purposes of decompiling binary code.
Shachar