Manhattan was covered in a fresh layer of snow yesterday, and the protesters chanted and marched in a circle on East 72nd Street and Madison Avenue, a corner where the foot traffic was otherwise comprised of holiday shoppers and parents towing kids through the drifts on sleds. Sonia Ossorio, of the National Organization for Women's New York chapter, which organized the protest, said that the date was chosen with the holiday shopping season in mind. And although Ralph Lauren was targeted because of its recent spate of disgustingly over-Photoshopped advertisements, not to mention the revelation that the company terminated model Filippa Hamilton's multi-year contract because, at 5'9" and 120 lbs, she had become "too fat" for its tastes, the message is really for all fashion companies. "We'd like retailers to realize that their customer base is women," Ossorio told me. "It's like, who do they think they are? Making women feel less sexy and less beautiful than we are. Why do they think they have the right to do that? And it's so unfortunate. Look at how it impacts the entire world, and how we feel about ourselves." Then Ossorio jumped over a snowbank to talk to two policemen who'd pulled up in a cruiser. "I'm the organizer if you have any questions!" she shouted. The cops stayed parked on the corner for the rest of the hour-long protest, and flipped through Sunday's Post.

The protesters chanted slogans like "Ralph Lauren, make no mistake/Your advertisements are a fake," and the somewhat less rhythmic "Healthy women and girls instead/Of sticks who can't support their heads." Popular signs included Filippa Hamilton's much-maligned and terribly Photoshopped ad:

As well as this disturbing image of Magdalena Frackowiak and a model whom we think is Charlotte di Calypso Valentina Zelyaeva, from spring of this year:

One protester, an older woman in a pair of pretty awesome black leather motorcycle boots, waggled her placard at a woman in a fur coat carrying a silver Givenchy bag as she was exiting the Ralph Lauren store. When Anna Holmes, who took this picture of the protest, started to take out a cigarette, the woman in the boots came charging over. "That's worse than being anorexic!" she said. (There is no moral authority like that of the former smoker; Anna put the pack back in her purse.) Turns out that Hilda, who didn't give her last name, has been active in protesting various causes — against the Vietnam war; for the civil rights movement; against the invasion of Iraq — since the '60s. "I have seen girls suffering from anorexia," said Hilda. "It is not a pleasant thing to see." Her gold earrings swung a little as she shook her head.

Carol Bloom, who works at the Women's Therapy Centre Institute, said she has counseled women with eating disorders. Bloom said she is particularly dismayed at the ways in which even as women have made great advances in claiming our rights over the last 40 years, the wider culture has pushed us to scrutinize — and find fault with — our bodies to an unprecedented degree. (Every month, it seems like Vogue has some new body part — the armpit, the neck, the lower abdomen — to obsess over, and a range of costly new cosmetic products and procedures to "fix" the offending bit of anatomy.) "More and more, you hear these horrible statistics about little girls dieting at earlier and earlier ages," said Bloom. "If you ask a young girl, 'What's the single most important thing in life?' a lot of them say 'Being attractive.'" Dieting to size down to a female ideal (not to mention an ideal which has been manipulated extensively with programs like Photoshop) requires women to "interfere with the most basic, natural form of good health, which is feeding yourself...And body dissatisfaction is the single most relevant cause, or predictor, for an eating disorder. And for a shitty life, frankly."

Filmmaker Darryl Roberts had been slated to speak at the protest, but his plane was delayed because of the winter storm. Roberts, you may remember, made the documentary America The Beautiful, which touched on the story of the model Gerren Taylor. Taylor was just 13 when she walked for Marc by Marc Jacobs, Tommy Hilfiger, and Catherine Malandrino, among more than a dozen other top designers. She was also the first black model to be in a Marc by Marc Jacobs campaign. Nonetheless, by the time she was 15 — and had grown to her full 6' height — she was called "obese" by her Paris agency because she had a hip size of 38".

The only man protesting, NOW New York's Arthur Lundquist, said he was there because he's sick of seeing the women in his life affected by the barrage of media imagery of "perfect" (and artificially perfected) bodies. "Real women have curves," he said.

I had noticed a woman who'd been standing around outside the Ralph Lauren store, watching the protest since it started. When I asked her what she thought of the whole production, as a bystander, she backed away from me and went down the street, which I thought was kinda weird. Turns out she worked for the Ralph Lauren store: she came back waving a Blackberry and telling me to call Ralph Lauren's corporate communications number. Then she went back down the block to watch the protest from a doorway.

A man walked by with two very young daughters, carrying a sled and coming from the direction of Central Park. "They're right, see," he said to his kids, who were pointing at the protesters. "The pictures of the women make them look too thin. And that's not pretty."

Ossorio said that NOW New York is trying to spearhead efforts to get legislation passed in the United States that would require all images that have been manipulated in post-production to carry disclaimers, which she likened to the disclaimers on tobacco that point out that the advertised product is harmful. Such laws are reportedly under consideration in France, and have been discussed in the U.K. "When I saw that, I thought, 'That's what we've gotta try here,'" said Ossorio. "And I don't see why it can't be done."

The only problem, of course, is that literally every picture on every page of every magazine has been altered in post-production — sometimes extensively, sometimes only a little, to correct lighting errors or even out shading. Products, people, landscapes: they all get changed. To give you an idea of how pervasive retouching is, take this example, furnished by one of Ralph Lauren's photographers. Brian Dilg has both the raw and the final, retouched images of a Polo Ralph Lauren children's ad posted on his personal site. The number of alterations to the little girl's body — and she looks like she must be, what, 8? — and the background is astonishing. Not only did Dilg clone and extend the French doors in the background of the shot, but he visibly slimmed the child model's waist and hips, and made her long-sleeved shirt short-sleeved by grafting on a re-sized shot of an adult woman's arms. "I was very proud of how I made the lean, muscular adult's arms plump to to match the girl's body type," writes Dilg, "but Polo asked to have them made skinny, just as anorexic as adult models."

If every page of every magazine had to carry a disclaimer, would women pay these images any less heed, or would the standard-issue reminder of the photograph's unreality become like so much white noise? The manipulation of photographs is as old as photography — what used to be achieved with darkroom techniques, airbrushing, dodging and burning, or negative-splicing, is now achieved, in much less time, with Photoshop tools. The prevalence of these images, and the attendant rise in our media consumption, might be wreaking havoc on our mental and physical health. (Studies show that womens' self-esteem drops after reading women's magazines.) But what can we do about it? Protesting is one answer. (And so is calling out the companies behind the worst kinds of images.) Is changing the law another?

Related:
Ralph Lauren's Ridiculous Photoshop, More Ridiculous Rage
Yet Another Ralph Lauren Photoshop Of Horrors
More Experts Call For Disclaimers On Photoshopped Ads
America The Beautiful Reveals Ugly Truths

NOW's vice president told Radar today that the now-infamous Ralph Lauren/Filippa Hamilton ad made her want "to burst into tears." She continued,

What I would like to see is an open apology to her and also affirming ads to women of all shapes and sizes and a statement that these women are beautiful. Certainly apologies are due to her personally. But what I'm really concerned about here is the message that that has sent to millions of pre-teens, daughters, mothers sister – women around the country and the world.

Last week, NOW criticized David Letterman, issuing a statement that read, in part,

As 'the boss,' he is responsible for setting the tone for his entire workplace — and he did that with sex. In any work environment, this places all employees — including employees who happen to be women — in an awkward, confusing and demoralizing situation. [...] The National Organization for Women calls on CBS to recognize that Letterman's behavior creates a toxic environment and to take action immediately to rectify this situation.

NOW's president Terry O'Neill also called out Roman Polanski's supporters, saying, "making excuses for Roman Polanski is dangerous talk." But some are asking whether NOW is focusing too much on big media stories, at the expense of issues that affect women more directly. In an AP interview, O'Neill brushed these questions aside, saying,

Men behaving badly is exactly the problem in this country. It's not a diversion - it's at the core of why women are unequal, why they are kept in second-class citizenship.

She adds,

We're living in a time when women who put themselves forward as leaders are subjected to vicious misogynistic attacks - it's very analogous to sexual harassment in the workplace. The message to other women is, 'Stay in your place.'

Ending sexual harassment is certainly an important goal for any feminist organization, but O'Neill overstates the case a bit when she says, "The question is whether the atmosphere in that workplace was poisoned by that lord of the manor, where everybody is made to understand that the women are there for sex and the men are there for work." While Letterman's involvement with employees was problematic, nobody's suggesting that the atmosphere on the show was anything like this. And in a time when, as the AP's David McCrary points out, the issue of healthcare reform has real and immediate consequences for women, NOW may be spreading itself a little thin.

I'm really of two minds about this. On the one hand, I obviously work for a website that has criticized both David Letterman and Ralph Lauren, and I think a fair working environment and accurate representations of women in advertisements are both worth fighting for. I also tend to get annoyed when people are too restrictive about what constitutes a feminist issue — it can be just a way of dismissing women's legitimate concerns, of telling us not to get our panties in a twist. At the same time, not every feminist organization have to talk about every feminist thing, and NOW has a pretty clear statement of priorities on its website. Its six core issues are "Advancing Reproductive Freedom, Promoting Diversity & Ending Racism, Stopping Violence Against Women, Winning Lesbian Rights, Achieving Constitutional Equality, [and] Ensuring Economic Justice." Criticizing Letterman's conduct could maybe be a way of "ensuring economic justice," but there are many more direct routes. And while taking Lauren to task could be a form of "promoting diversity," I can think of some stronger ones.

Again, it's not that Lauren and Letterman don't deserve a tongue-lashing. It's just that delivering said lashing may not be the best thing for NOW. As the self-proclaimed "largest, most comprehensive feminist advocacy group in the United States," NOW has real clout with policymakers in Washington — clout that may be weakened if the organization gets involved in too many arguments outside its core mission. And O'Neill's claim that "men behaving badly is exactly the problem in this country" is just simplistic, not the kind of statement we need from someone in a position to help solve the country's real problems. If anything, NOW's willingness to get involved in the Letterman and Lauren scandals seen like an attempt to piggyback on high-profile stories. But this piggybacking could end up hurting women if it makes NOW seem unfocused. Commenter Pantra said it best: "NOW needs a better PR person."

Exclusive: National Organization For Women Demands Ralph Lauren Apologizes To "Too Fat" Fired Model [Radar]
Women's Group Blasts Letterman Over Sexual Affairs With Staff [CNN]
NOW's Top Six Priority Issues [NOW]
NOW's New President Takes On Men Behaving Badly [AP, via Yahoo News]
NOW President Terry O'Neill Calls Polanski Furor "Dangerous Talk" That Could Set Back Women's Rights [NOW]

"NOW is the organization that fights for the rights of all women no matter the circumstances of their birth, their race or sexual orientation, no matter if they live in poverty or are trying to escape violence," says O'Neill, "My experience with domestic violence, as an abused wife left me humiliated and embarrassed. I only began to talk about this publically five years ago as I realized that to keep quiet was to continue the abuse. I want to empower women and telling my story does just that. Women are fed up with persistent inequality and are ready for change. I am honored and eager to lead NOW in making that change."

NOW Elects Maryland Woman Its Next President [AP]
NOW Activists Elect New President Terry O'Neill To Succeed Kim Gandy [NOW]

We've all witnessed scenarios where, on the playground little girls are being taunted by little boys while both girls and boys stand idle, afraid to speak up or even cheering. Or, in the workplace males tease young and older female co-workers; make obscene gestures, inappropriate comments, laughing and expecting (often correctly) that everyone will join in. Then there was that movie where Jodie Foster portrayed the true story of woman who was ganged raped in a bar while others looked on and encouraged the realization. Still others pretended the rape didn't happen. In short, gang raping of women is commonplace in our culture both physically and metaphorically.

Okay.

So Marcia, I get it. You're clearly a little rage-happy, and this is an emotional campaign — I feel you. But since you decided to bring up not only the concept of Ted Kennedy as a feminist, but society's willingness to stand idly/denial-blinded by as all this anecdotal degradation of women goes down — and seriously, when the fuck did John Edwards and Barack Obama snicker at Hillary's tears? — why didn't you bring up that one time in the Vineyard? Because it reminds you too much of that other time in that Arkansas hotel room? What of, after all this abuse and betrayal, just finally learning your lesson and, I dunno, taking up with the new guy?

NY Now: Betrayal! [Politico]
Psychological Gang Bang Of Hillary Is Proof We need a Woman President [NOW NY]