Truth in Advertising?

Even Jessica Alba, named sexiest woman in the world more than once, isn't immune to retouching.

I, like many women, find the airbrushing of the female form in popular media to be, well, basically an evil plot by the patriarchal multinational media conglomerates to subjugate women into a reduced psychosocial status that requires them to buy into meaningless consumer-driven lifestyles of diet products, spanx, makeup and anti-cellulite creams in an attempt to match the media portrayals of women’s bodies, which are rarely realistic.

(Cough, sorry, flashback to my younger, more strident years.)

Still, it’s actually true. And it pisses me off even more when the original photo shows a genuinely well-proportioned (or even skinny) woman (see above). So I was blown away when I saw that a law is being proposed in France to require labeling of retouched body images.

The required warning would be needed in newspaper and magazine advertising, press photos, product packaging, political campaigns and art photography, according to the Telegraph. The language will reportedly be: “Retouched photograph aimed at changing a person’s physical appearance.”

via Photoshopping Illegal? France Set to Regulate Airbrushed Pics.

It seems unlikely to pass in France, and unlikely to ever be brought up in the U.S., but I think this would be great. In the same vein I also would like to see similar disclaimers on teen movies and TV shows: “The actors portraying 15-year-olds are in fact 28 years of age. You should not look, act, or dress like this is you are really 15;” and historical films/fiction: “Things didn’t really happen this way, but we don’t really care if you know the difference between fact and fiction, because if we say it’s based on true events, we get more cash.”

National health care, now this? If only I’d stayed in French class in college. Sadly, I didn’t get much past, “je suis un barreur.” (Ironically, I dropped the class because it conflicted with crew practice.)