This article was crossposted at Empowher's Women's Health News This week's French Elle magazine had me thinking about the long debated issue of retouching photos and how it might affect women's health. The magazine features Monica Bellucci and several other female celebrities photographed without any makeup or retouching work. Last month, French public health officials, in an effort to prevent normalizing eating disorders, proposed that magazines state the extent to which their photos are retouched. An op-ed video by Jesse Epstein in the NY Times argued why this may be valuable: retouching and piecing together images of models negatively changes our standards of beauty and perceptions of health. A quick glance at retouching examples on the internet shows how standards of beauty or perfection are manipulated by photographers and artists in order to sell a particular message. The studies that show the prevalence of body image issues among young women are plentiful. A 1997 Garner survey found that 89% of female respondents wanted to lose weight. A 1980 survey found that young girls are more influenced and affected by cultural standards of body images than boys. And a 1999 study found that 70% of the 550 young working class women surveyed believed that images in magazines influenced their notion of the ideal body shape. Unhealthy body image could lead to unhealthy dieting, overeating and other eating disorders, which could lead to larger mental and physical health issues. Women who are not comfortable in their own skin may be unsatisfied in their romantic, personal and sexual relationships. Like nutritional information on the side of food packages, I think there could be value in letting readers know to what extent pictures have been reconfigured. Readers would be constantly reminded of the work that goes into creating particular images for marketing and advertising purposes. Perhaps it would be a step towards being open about the relationship between women's health, body image and media representation. Still, there is much more work to be done in providing proper education about beauty and health standards for women, especially among young adolescents. Access to healthcare, proper health education, maintaining a healthy diet and focusing on one's well being will be bigger steps to reinforcing positive body image for all women. I leave you with a clip of Susie Orbach, who was interviewed on The Colbert Report about her new book, "Bodies"
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Hmm... I dunno about this. I think the impact of the media on eating disorders is a bit overblown. They're not going to magically stop happening just because a magazine prints "oh, p.s. we glued girl #1s head on girl #2s body".
I disagree with your statement that "the impact of the media on eating disorders is a bit overblown."
The various media are a major contibutor to standards of beauty. After all, why would they go to all the trouble, and expence, of retouching photos if they weren't trying to maintain a standard?
People generally get their cues about what is acceptable, and indeed desireable, not only from their peers, but from the wider social constructs as well. The media, and in particular the popular media, are a powerful influence on these social constructs.
Eating disorders do have other other causes than media representations of the body beautiful, but to say that their impact is overblown is somewhat dismissive.
And gluing girl #1's head on girl #2's body ain't what happens in the retouching of images. It's also a strawman.
I get that the media is a big contributor to what we think is beautiful. But eating disorders aren't about being attractive.
"But eating disorders aren't about being attractive."
Some of them are. Mine was.
Mine wasn't.
Mine was also. Though there were other factors but the most overwhelming was me wanting to be thin and beautiful and I remember clearly wanting to look like the girls I saw in Seventeen and YM and comparing myself to them. I had no idea at only 13 of retouching, genetic effects on where and how much fat the body stores or metabolism. I absorbed the media like a sponge and it made me sick. Sure, eating disorders are complex diseases and depending on the case some are motivated by many other causes/factors but a strong case for the media playing a role in many has been made. Look at studies on the rise of eating disorders with the adoption of american media in other countries. JJgirl23, yours might not have been, but that doesn't mean that many women's are not.
Mine was also.
People generally get their cues about what is acceptable, and indeed desireable, not only from their peers, but from the wider social constructs as well.
I wonder too, if for some people, the media acts as a surrogate peer group. So what that means is some people prioritize and assimilate the cues and information coming from the media as if it were actually coming from their peers.
I'm sure people feeling like crap about themselves isn't a new thing, but at least before the hyper-information age, folks at least had a fighting chance to work it out on their own...
Scarlett Johansson responds to her image being used in gossip rags and the lies told about her body to make others feel insecure.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/authorarchive/?scarlett-johansson/2009/04/
Myabe women shouldn't compare themlseves to women in magazines to begin with.
You make it sound a lot more simple than it actually is. The media is meant to influence. That is how they sell things. They play a huge part in telling us what is beautiful. They make women feel inferior. They sell the product aimed to fix or in some way address that "inferiority". Women are not just comparing themselves with women in magazines, they are being compared to women in magazines (and on tv, music videos, movies, etc). There is no way you can tell me that most of the people you know (including men) have not in some way had what they consider to be beautiful in a woman influenced by the media. It isn't always as blatant as a woman looking at a magazine and thinking "My legs are so much shorter and heavier than all these models and models are beautiful so I must not be". Sometimes it is just a cumulative effect of us all being shown these unrealistic images and having them presented to us as beauty so that when we don't come close enough we are considered not attractive and judged harshly. So women might not consciously compare themselves to a specific woman but they are still being measured up against a standard the magazine and that model have helped to set. To completely buck that is really, really, difficult. It is even harder when you are a teenager without the analytical view and life experience earned by age and care about fitting in, not getting teased or getting a date for prom.
we shouldnt dianita, but that dosen't change the fact that we do, and are conditioned by society to do so.
Hell, I'm 5'7 and 115 lbs, and I know I over-eat on fatty bad for me foods becuase I am seen as "too skinny" though I am a healthy weight according to my doctors.
We all suffer under the patriarchy, no matter how removed we might wish ourselves.