Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
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....
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?
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.
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
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.
"free speech" doesn't mean "free to say whatever you want"
You bet your bottom it does.
Free speech does not apply to commercial speech (in US, at least). I don't think advertisers have the option to fall back on 1st amendment if it is pretty clear that the "speech" in question is an advert.
Perhaps with Citizens vs United paving the way there will be a revision extending 1st amendment to all commercial speech (?)
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