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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!
Back in the glory days of super models a la Cindy Crawford and Tyra Banks, from what CC said the typical size for a model was 6. Now, they're 0s and 2s. Some of them are downright repulsive. There's a pretty nasty pic of Gisele Bunchken post-pregnancy and it looks like she was trying to starve off the weight. Might as well drape the clothes over a wire hanger if that's what they're aiming for.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
It's not just *mostly* unattainable, it's unwise to even try, much less to achieve.
Minor pet peeve of mine... Between anorectic fashion models and overweight "accept me as I am" reactions to the fashion models, the "sensible middle" has been lost.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
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....
They are no more "human" and entitled to human rights, then this building I'm sitting in. The people inside the building have a right to free speech, but not the building itself.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
'The Israeli law is paternalistic in that it prohibits something because of the effect it might have on others in the longer term.'
Isn't this the reason we have warnings on boxes of cigarettes?
'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.'"
The US already has a law that "paternalistic in that it prohibits something because of the effect it might have on others in the longer term". It is the FDA law that prohibits unsubstantiated medical claims because it might cause people to ignore treatments that actually work. The issue of under weight and Photoshoped images is that they cause people to attempt to attain that standard and cause health issues. This has been proven to happen.
I can't readily find any data just for Israel, but I find the law's author's assertion that "We also know that the first cause of death in the age group of 15-24 is anorexia" to be highly suspect. In the US, 46% of deaths ages 15-24 are accidents (33% motor vehicles), then there's homicide, suicide, cancer & other illnesses. Anorexia is nowhere near the top as a cause of death. Israelis have cars and murders and cancer just like Americans (ok, probably less cars & murders, but still); I find it hard to believe that their stats are terribly different.
The article itself says that mortality rates are 4% for anorexia, which is bad, but surely all the 10% with eating disorders she cites don't have anorexia?
The irony in Palestinian Israeli relations is that they're *both* descended from the same people who once made up the Hebrew tribe in ancient Israel. Not that either would ever admit it. It's kind of a bizarre situation. It would be actually be funny, if they weren't killing and oppressing each other with such deadly seriousness.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
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.
It's like saying that they don't know what they're talking about.
Saying that Palestinians should not be kept walled into ghettos is not antisemitic. Disagreeing with Israeli government policy is not antisemitic. Being in favor of a two-state solution is not antisemitic. Criticizing Israel is not antisemitic.
When you don't "use that word correctly", you are doing a lot more than using a wrong "naming convention". You are factually incorrect.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Ever notice how cereal boxes say stuff like "enlarged to show texture." or how all car commercials present the text "trained driver on closed course" or cigartte cartons proclaim, "we're pretty sure this is going to kill you."
ok. i paraphrased the last one, but these are all because we do pass laws requiring that companies don't misrepresent their products. The cereal flakes are actually quite small. You won't be doing donuts in that car. The action figures do not walk and talk. If we have decided that people are going to feel so ripped off by the actual size of their cereal flakes that we need laws governing how you can depict your cereal, it stands to reason that we might need to inform people that those models have been digitally altered to conform to unattainable levels of beauty.
...mmmm....no, I think he does. One can be an anti-Semite, or one can be anti-Semitic, and they mean the same thing, essentially. It's commonly misspelled "Semetic", though, so maybe you're thinking of that.
Or you're thinking of the Semites, a Biblical term referring to the descendants of one of Noah's sons. Or you're thinking of the ethnic umbrella group, which refers to anyone who speaks a Semitic language, which is pretty much the entire Arabian peninsula since Arabic and Hebrew are the two most common. Amharic is in there, too, as well as a bunch of others. So, yes, in that sense it is ironic to say that someone criticizing the Israelis for their treatment of Palestinians is an anti-Semite.
However, in English, the term has been overwhelmingly used to refer to discrimination against Jews, so if you have a gripe with that, take it up with the late 19th century. Whether the claim of antisemitism is valid or not is another issue, but his use of the word is correct.
This unbiased moderation brought to you by the Porcine Aviation Group!
Someone who is actually fit, with more muscle and lean body mass, can actually show up as unhealthy when using BMI with the way we measure it.....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I'm pretty libertarian, but I'm 100% OK with that requirement by itself. Labeling laws help consumers make informed decisions about their purchases, which is a basic requirement of a free market. For example, I fully support a store's right to sell ground beef containing "pink slime" as long as it's clearly labeled as such. Along those lines, let Israel require companies to state that their images do not depict genuine humans. I'd like to be able to show my daughter that I'm not just making this stuff up, that models in magazines really don't look like that in real life and aren't a reasonable standard to judge yourself by.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Wish I had mod points. Most people have no idea that both people co-existed in relative harmony for hundreds, if not thousands of years. Not only that, there's some indication the "Palestinians" have converted their faith twice...once to Christianity during the Byzantine era, and then eventually to Muslim when the Ottomans took over...
Advertising is not free speech. We already have tons of laws about what can be said in advertisements. We have entire categories of products banned from advertising via various forms of media.
And, besides that, fuck push advertisers. They don't inform. They don't help. They play upon human psychology and insecurity to make people feel inferior if they don't have The Product. They try to associate themselves with warm, fuzzy feelings to make people feel good about The Product. They do not operate on a rational level. The sooner we're rid of them entirely the better.
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal
Pseudoscience, you mean. Circumcision is not connected with cancer prevention at all. On the other hand, this is a procedure that destroys half the penile skin (it is double-layered, keep in mind), and more precisely its most erotically sensitive bits , so it's no surprise that it is clearly linked to erectile dysfunction . Oh, how about over a hundred baby deaths , every year, in the USA alone, or life-lasting psychological effects ?
As a mutilated man, I'd fully support a return to Hadrian's law: a total ban, under penalty of death. Stern, but fair!
Circumcision is child abuse.
Apartheid, apartheid, apartheid, settlements, settlements, settlements.
interesting.
All throughout Arabia, Shiite Muslims kill Sunni Muslims, nobody cares.
Sunni Muslims kill Shiite Muslims, nobody cars.
But if an Israeli kills a Palestinian - Apartheid, apartheid, apartheid.
Border disputes are border disputes all across the world. But if one party of a border dispute is Israel, it's occupation, settlement, apartheid racist.
And yet Israel still treats their Palestinian neighbors better than most of the nearby contries treat their Palestinian refuge camps. Naturally, the same people who blame the former on "teh Evil Jews" also blame the latter on "teh Evil Jews" (as well as the national debt, the behavior of Hollywood, and price of gas ,.....).
It's anti-semitic in the sense that it's usually mentioned as part of some larger anti-semitic rant.
On the other half of your comment - if Palestinians were launching rockets at my neighborhood school, I would have been vigorously advocating a Carthaginian peace myself, so I can only admire Israel's restraint in the circumstances.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
It's like saying that they don't know what they're talking about.
Saying that Palestinians should not be kept walled into ghettos is not antisemitic. Disagreeing with Israeli government policy is not antisemitic. Being in favor of a two-state solution is not antisemitic. Criticizing Israel is not antisemitic.
When you don't "use that word correctly", you are doing a lot more than using a wrong "naming convention". You are factually incorrect.
You're saying he's being anti-semantic?
The road to tyranny has always been paved with claims of necessity.
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