… Airbrushing Health Warnings

Another piece of old-ish news (3rd August) due to my traveling, but something that I actually have an opinion on and therefore felt it appropriate to blog on, seeing as that is the whole point of this slow moving blogmajig.

So the lovely Lib Dems in conjunction with Harriet Harman, have called on the Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) to ban the airbrushing of pics of celebs used in advertising. Now obviously this practise is widely used, and it’s pretty well known, but the Libs are partially focusing on magazines targeted at under 16s; a group which, I guess, may not be clued-up enough to realize the alterations that pics of their fave stars have undertaken.

They also want to see all airbrushed images in magazines to carry health warnings. I think that’s a pretty good idea really!

(Twiggy looking significantly younger in an ad for Olay; the type of ad the Libs want to contain a health warning)

In my year as Welfare Officer at Leeds University Union, I ran a campaign about body image, encouraging students of all ages, sexes and races, to feel comfortable in their own skin. It was called ‘Body Beautiful’ and focused on the links between the media (airbrushing included,) the pressure to look good, and the dangerous path to eating disorders.

During my research and planning for the campaign I came across an education pack from Dove’s campaign for real beauty. And although I won’t comment on Dove’s hypocrisy regarding this, the pack was really useful at laying out the facts. It contained a DVD showing airbrushing in action, and I think it made reference to the Evolution video (showing a model from her ‘raw’ state to an airbrushed finished ‘product’) It’s amazing the kind of stuff you can do to someone in post-production. Another thread of research led to a BBC program starting Alesha Dixon where she approached some magazines and asked them to put her on the covers (and a billboard) without first airbrushing her image. In the end she ended up on a billboard as far as I remember, and noone really noticed the difference, but some magazines had previously refused to put her on the cover as she was. Shocking really, but they need to sell sell sell and they do it using sleek, often unrealistic images of women.


Now obviously, working in advertising myself, I understand that images need to be touched up and polished before heading out into the world. However I think that as long as it is not exaggerating the effects of a product through excessive alterations, then it’s a standard practice required in a very competitive industry. I do agree though, that a warning on beauty products would be a good thing to do, to encourage consumers to really think about the visual benefits of e.g. a face cream. Now yes, this would fall to the advertisers and no, the client probably wouldn’t like it as it would discourage sales, but who’s to ignore the face that one day, a brave client could come along and request that their ads all mention their airbrushing status. Ok so it’s a long shot, but who knows…