Speaking to The Sunday Times this weekend, the minister for equality, Lynne Featherstone, is calling for all retouched photos in fashion magazines to carry a warning that they are not authentic, and is keen that children and young women should be informed about airbrushing so they do not think anyone can have a 12 inch waist.
Her argument that stick thin, perfect models staring out of the pages of fashion magazines result in young girls and women, and a growing number of men, result in feelings of inadequacy and cause lifelong damage to self esteem and physical health is a very valid one, although the increased number of eating disorder sufferers and people with body image issues cannot be blamed solely on magazine editors.
Featherstone argues that the constant bombardment of retouched images poses “a significant risk to the physical and mental health of young people and can even lead to anorexia and bulimia". In terms of eating disorders, such images can certainly be a contributory factor but they are only one of many. Such issues are far more complex than simply the desire to look like the images portrayed in magazines and the root causes run far deeper.
The two friends I lost to anorexia rarely read fashion magazines. They were simply not interested. That said, airbrushing is still something young people should be aware of. Sophia Neophitou, creative director of Harper’s Bazaar argues that it is the job of the fashion industry to create fantasy, and I can understand that. Splashing health warnings on every image would take away from the fantasy, and that’s an argument that makes sense too.
Part of the solution has to be to take the time to educate our children about the media and the role of airbrushing so they are aware that it takes places frequently, that the images they see are not ‘real’, so they do not feel inadequate when they do not match up. That way there would be no need to put health warnings on every single image -- children and young people would already be aware that they are not authentic and portray a look that simply cannot be achieved .
As someone who used images from fashion magazines as ‘thinspiration’ many years ago, it would have been extremely helpful to have known the images were not real and not achievable. I honestly believed they were.
Photo credit
