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

The reader writes:

One of the covers we did featured teen pop star Hilary Duff (October 2004). The next month's cover subject was actress Mischa Barton (November 2004). Our [redacted], a [redacted] by the name of [redacted]—who has quite a reputation in the biz as a [redacted] — expressed dislike at Ms. Barton's hand as it appeared in the retouched cover photography. ("Her hand looks too old and veiny," I believe, was [redacted]'s objection at the time.) Hence, [redacted] instructed our in-house digital retoucher to lift Hilary Duff's hand off the previous month's cover, flip it around, and give it a virtual manicure.

Conclusion: Mischa Barton got Frankenstein-ed — she appeared on the cover of a glossy with national distribution sporting Hilary Duff's hand.

Here, friends is the evidence:


Hilary Duff's hand, October 2004.

Hilary Duff's Hand on Mischa Barton's arm, November 2004. Kudos to the art department lackey who took the time to change the nail polish!

You'd think that having veins in your hand meant you were, you know, alive. But no. Veins=old. And old=bad! Mischa Barton was 18 when the photograph was taken (and on a teen-friendly hit show called The O.C. — what a great message to send fans!). But since Hilary Duff was 17 that year, the younger hand won. Unfortunately, something seems weird about Hilary Duff's shoulder on the left there (click to enlarge main image) so, actually, no one wins.

Earlier: Photoshop Of Horrors Hall Of Shame, 2000-2009

Last week, we received a 4-page legal letter from the law firm Lavely & Singer - which represents actress Demi Moore - regarding a post in early November that pointed out a striking (and, frankly, hilarious) oddity on a recent magazine cover (above) featuring Ms. Moore.

(Click on thumbnails to enlarge)

To recap: On November 9, Jezebel posted a peek at the just-released W magazine cover of Ms. Moore, and an eagle-eyed reader pointed out that the actress' left thigh looked strangely situated in relation to the draping of the Balmain leotard around it. Photoshopping was suspected, and questioned, in a follow-up post two days later. Then, the story went wide, with media watchers like Xeni Jardin at BoingBoing, photographer Anthony Citrano, and Ms. Moore herself weighing in. (Mr. Citrano, who apparently got the same letter we did, has just posted a rebuttal...complete with YouTube videos. It's worth checking out.) One individual even went as far as to assert that Ms. Moore's head was simply plunked on the body of a runway model wearing the Balmain design on October 1, a theory we rejected. Now, a little over four weeks later, lawyers have, inexplicably - hilariously - become involved. From their letter:

"My client's hip, waist or legs were not altered, retouched, or photoshopped for the cover image…. False claims or insinuations that she secretly uses extraordinary artificial means to alter her appearance are extremely damaging. My client's reputation has been tarnished by false statements or implications that she desired or required that her appearance be digitally slenderized by altering the appearance of her hip for the magazine's cover, and that she lied to the public about it."

Lavely & Singer's correspondence to us also includes supporting letters from W magazine creative director Dennis Freedman and the magazine's cover photographers, Mert Alas and Marcus Piggot. Freedman claims that absolutely no retouching was done to the photograph. (Oh-kay.) Mert and Marcus write (somewhat excitedly):

"When we have met Demi for W cover story she was super fit to start with! The choice of dress also gave her a catwalk model like silhouette!... There was ABSOLUTELY no retouching on her hips or waist or legs!!"

Demi Moore herself and her publicist, Stephen Huvane, are also copied on the Lavely & Singer letter. (We'd like to point out that, the time of our initial coverage, we contacted both Huvane and W for comment. Mr. Huvane didn't get back to us, but W did, and we quoted their denial.)

In addition to accusing this site (and others) of falsely claiming that Demi Moore "secretly uses extraordinary artificial means to alter her appearance," Lavely & Singer are demanding we issue both a retraction an an apology. As those who actually read our posts know, at no point did we say or imply that Demi Moore demanded, "desired" or "required" that she be "slenderized." Nor did we accuse her of lying about it. Instead, we quoted her Tweeted denials and a skeptical, professional photographer's challenge of them. That said, we would like to take this opportunity to sincerely apologize if we cast aspersions on, or in any way hurt the feelings of Ms. Moore's left hip, waist, or legs. Our only intention was to call attention to distorted and disturbing-looking magazine covers... and the editors, photographers, art directors and retouchers who commission and create them.

Earlier: The Curious Case Of Demi Moore's Left Hip
Demi Moore Posts Original W Cover Photo
Was Demi Moore Photoshopped Onto Model's Body For W? Not Likely.
Photographer Bets $5,000 On Demi Moore W Cover Retouching

Related: Demi Moore's Hip, And Handling The Truth [Zigzaglens]
Was Demi Moore Ralph-Laurenized On "W" Mag Cover, With Missing Hip-Flesh? [BoingBoing]
Demi Claims missing Hipflesh Is For Real. But $5,000 Says It's Moore Photoshopping [BoingBoing]

[Image Via Just Jared]

Earlier Self Editor: Photoshopped Mags Just Giving Women What They Want

15. Russian Glamour, June 2009
Beyoncé's skin looked digitally darkened on the cover of Russian Glamour — and the editors had a guide! A magazine called Joy used the same shot in December 2007. Was something lost in translation? Save your "black Russian" jokes until the end.

14. L'Oreal, August 2008
Beyoncé's skin seemed very light in ads for Feria haircolor. One theory: she was washed out by the strong lighting usually used in shooting hair.

13. Vogue, November 2009
The cast of Nine is chock-full of gorgeous women, but this shot is a mindscramble of random rays of sunlight in hair and dresses with edges so sharp they look like they're for paper dolls. As I wrote in October: "I'm guessing [Annie] Leibovitz shot them each separately and then did a composite, but when you have a person who doesn't cast a shadow on the lady next to her, then that person is a vampire." Poor Kate Hudson looks like she was slapped on as an afterthought.

12. Complex, April/May 2009
Kim Kardashian's waist was cinched, her thighs were slimmed, her skin skin smoothed out and her hairline was cleaned up. Plus, her head appears to be a different shape in the "after" image. Who would have thought a skull could be made "sexier"?

11. Self, September 2009
Kelly Clarkson's "Total Body Confidence" came from digitally slimming her waist and behind. Two Self editors explained that the cover: "is not, as in a news photograph, journalism. It is, however, meant to inspire women to want to be their best."

10. King Arthur poster, 2004
Movie marketers felt they must, they must, they must increase the bust. Ironically, Keira Knightley told the Guardian that she lost her chest, doing archery and preparing for the role:

To fight, convincingly, shoulder to shoulder, she had to do that thing that is so de rigueur, which is totally to change your body shape. "I was about three times the size I am now. It worried me, but it was cool, it was a body that was doing what it should do. I haven't got a clue because I don't weigh myself, but it was all muscle and I was big. My neck disappeared. My chest flattened even more. It wasn't the most feminine thing in the world, but it worked for the part, because there was strength there, and it was needed."

Of course, Hollywood can't imagine a world in which people would see a movie starring an athletic, flat-chested woman. So a digital boob job followed.

9. Redbook, July 2007
The crazy thing about the Faith Hill Redbook cover is not that it was Photoshopped — it's that this is the standard amount of digital altering that goes into a cover. Unlike some true Photoshop disasters, there are no alarming mistakes here to tip you off. That makes it easy to accept the retouched image without even blinking. Faith Hill is a beautiful woman. But she needed 11 different kinds of alterations before she could be on the cover of Redbook. What a world.

8. Campari calendar, 2008
Jessica Alba: Just another woman whose real body wasn't good enough. In this case, her waist needed to be nipped in so she could shill liquor.

7. Vogue, May 2008
RoboGwyneth looks like a robot, or an alien, depending on whom you ask. One thing is for sure: Her head and neck are not in the same space-time continuum.

6. Redbook, June 2003
Jennifer Aniston's head was placed on to Jennifer Aniston's body — from another photo shoot. At the time, her publicist, Steven Huvane, said: "It's a combination of three pictures. If you're going to do it, then at least match her head up to her body, and make the neck look like it belongs to her. I still can't figure out which exact picture the face came from." A Redbook spokeswoman downplayed the changes: "The only things that were altered in the cover photo were the color of her shirt and the length of her hair, very slightly, in order to reflect her current length."

The neck does look alarmingly unreal, and her head and waist are out of sync somehow. Angelina is surely to blame.

5.Redbook, July 2003
The month after the Aniston debacle, Redbook was at it again: According to USA Today, "[Julia's] head comes from a paparazzi shot taken at the 2002 People's Choice awards. Her body, meanwhile, is from the Notting Hill movie premiere [in 1999]." Julia's publicist, Marcy Engelman, said, at the time: "It's a shame they didn't use the body that went with the head, because it was a great Giorgio Armani pantsuit (that she wore to the People's Choice awards)."

4. Newsweek, March 2005
The editors used Martha's head and a model's body, because Ms. Stewart was still in jail when the issue was being put together. It wasn't supposed to be a photograph, anyway, it was art: "The piece that we commissioned was intended to show Martha as she would be, not necessarily as she is,'' Lynn Staley, assistant managing editor at Newsweek, told The New York Times. Staley acknowledged that the cover carried a disclaimer: ''In this case, we identified this piece as a photo illustration." As Martha would say, it's a "good thing" you did.

3. Seventeen, May 2003
Think about all the Buffy plots which could have been orchestrated around Sarah Michelle Gellar's weird wrist appendage over there on the left, if her arm actually looked like that.

2. GQ, February 2003.
Some people saw Titanic over and over again — but they never saw those legs, on the left. Kate Winslet was pissed about being trimmed down on this cover, saying:

"The retouching is excessive. I do not look like that and more importantly I don't desire to look like that. I actually have a Polaroid that the photographer gave me on the day of the shoot… I can tell you they've reduced the size of my legs by about a third. For my money it looks pretty good the way it was taken."

1. Ralph Lauren Blue Label ad, October 2009
In which model Filippa Hamilton was turned into a string of spaghetti.

For one thing, putting a hastily-snapped, haphazardly lit runway shot on a major magazine cover (especially one that prides itself on premium photography) would test even the most transformative powers of Photoshop. And really, why bother? They actually shot Moore, the gallery of photos indicates the actress is indeed extremely slim and toned — even if not to the full extent of the post-production wizardry. And for everything else, of course, there's retouching.

Demi Moore's Body Replaced By W Magazine [Pop Culture Madness]

Earlier: The Curious Case of Demi Moore's Left Hip
Photographer Bets $5000 On Demi Moore W Cover

Photographer Anthony Citrano, who pointed out the hip chop to Boing Boing, issued a throwdown on Twitter, elaborating,

Whether or not her hip was botched, I do not believe for a moment that the image Demi posted yesterday is the original shot.

If she's aware of that - and I expect she is - it's irresponsible (and silly) of her to make that assertion.

So, I'll see her move and raise her $5,000: if the shot she posted yesterday is really the unretouched original, I will donate $5,000 to a charity of her choosing.

So far, Moore hasn't responded. Yesterday, though, she was happy to chat about her shape:

Ouch. Well, if Moore had read the story, she'd probably have found a plausible defense for the shot which, if it was over-Photoshopped, wouldn't be her fault anyway, as Citrano also notes.

... Moore is thinner than expected, which emphasizes the prominent bone structure that still photographs so well but also gives her a slightly gaunt appearance in person. Her chopstick legs are sheathed in skinny dark jeans, and her oversize cashmere sweatshirt looks as if it could have been borrowed from husband Ashton Kutcher's side of the closet.

So should we chalk it up to the chopsticks? Only the original photo could settle it.

Demi Claims Missing Hipflesh Is For Real. [Boing Boing]
Demi Goddess [W]

Related: Anthony Citrano Photography

Earlier: The Curious Case of Demi Moore's Left Hip

Miller, famous for her work for Victoria's Secret, apes classic cheesecake poses in the campaign. The ads — or, excuse me, the "Salute From the Home Front to Those Who Defend Freedom" — are slated to run all month. (In fact, in a neat bit of corporate-branded patriotism, Harley-Davidson has re-named November "Military Appreciation Month." Traditional festivities apparently include ogling half-naked models in uncomfortable poses.) But is it just us, or is there something a little bit off about the appearance Miller's waist in the picture of her in profile, on the far right of the YouTube homepage banner?

As a tipster put it, maybe Photoshop is supposed to be patriotic now? Perhaps we should be thankful the retoucher at least left her whole hip intact.

In still images from the campaign, Miller's waist looks to have been similarly whittled. In fact, her head looks as wide as her rib cage.

Which is funny, because in the attached campaign video, we see footage of Miller posing for what seems to be the very same picture — she is saluting, wearing the same shoes, hairstyle and cap, and a similar outfit. (Clothes can easily be changed in post-production programs like Photoshop; it wouldn't surprise me if the belted beige leotard Miller wears in the final version of the picture was drawn on.)

And, again in the video, the camera even zooms in for a second on that unretouched image on the monitor at the shoot.

Funny, Miller really looks much better in these than she does in the over-processed end result.

Images like these, or Annie Leibovitz's photomontages, or the recent Ralph Lauren ads that have caused so much consternation, immediately jump out at the viewer because they ring false. We've seen bodies before: we all know nobody is built like that. The people responsible for the images know they're unreal. We know they're unreal. So why do marketers continue to assume we will buy products associated with pictures we fully recognize to be false?

We imagine female members of the armed services would be among the many upon whom the charm of such a campaign is lost.

YouTube [Official Site]
Harley-Davidson Military Appreciation [Official Site]
Marisa Miller & H-D Salute Those Who Defend Freedom [YouTube]

Earlier:
Ralph Lauren's Ridiculous Photoshop, More Ridiculous Rage
Ralph Lauren Fires Photoshopped Model For Being Too "Fat"
Ralph Lauren Fires
Yet Another Ralph Lauren Photoshop Of Horrors
Vogue's November Cover: Photoshop Of Horrors
ANTM: The Importance Of "Barbie Toe"
The Curious Case Of Demi Moore's Left Hip

No one's really saying. This is what a spokesperson for W just told us: Photographers Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott "did not do anything unusual or out of the ordinary on Demi Moore for the photo on the cover of W. Demi is an extraordinary beautiful woman and we feel our cover reflects that."

Well, okay. As long as anatomically impossible renderings are usual and ordinary.

Although W has a history of using master retoucher Pascal Dangin for its celebrity covers and fashion editorials, the magazine's rep says that the retouching was done in-house by Alas and Piggott's staff. We contacted Demi's rep, too, but haven't heard back.

By the way, if you check out the runway shot of the Balmain leotard Moore is wearing, the W cover makes model Anja Rubik look positively curvaceous. Appearing to out-narrow a hauntingly bony model? Now that's "still sizzling."

Demi Goddess [W]

Earlier: "The Frustrating Part Is That The Type Of Roles I'd Be Interested In Are Not Really Coming To Me."

Related: Pixel Perfect [The New Yorker]
Demi Moore For W Magazine [Project Rungay]

It's no surprise that Self put Clarkson on its key September issue – her August 2007 cover was a top seller that year, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations. But according to WWD Memo Pad's Stephanie D. Smith (a former colleague), "The issue was the magazine's worst seller through September on newsstands, pulling in 220,000 copies and causing the magazine to miss its rate base that month." What went wrong? It's tempting to believe that widespread disdain at a grotesque Photoshop job was to blame, but that's not the whole story.

Once upon a time, women's magazines had a list of rules of what worked on covers –- which teases, colors, numbers postures, type of celebrity. The media world is a lot more crowded now, the rules are continually broken and disproved, and any ladymag editor will readily admit that predicting what will sell on a cover is by no means a science. Would you have guessed, for example, that Zooey Deschanel would be Self's best selling cover so far this year, outselling even number two contender Beyonce? (That's according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations' publisher reports).

Something that fanned the popular outrage against the Self cover was the fact that anyone who cares could find out exactly what Clarkson really looks like online – and did. Everyone knows there's an element of fantasy in magazines, but when the reality (seen in hourly paparazzi and red carpet shots on blogs) and the polished image are so glaringly far apart, you can't blame readers for feeling like they're being taken for fools and walking on by.

Aggressive Photoshopping also serves to make all celebrities look exactly the same — who hasn't stood at a newsstand and wondered which indistinguishable blondish and lean cover star is which? A casual glance might easily miss the fact that that's the ever-popular Clarkson, thoroughly transformed. (Incidentally, Clarkson also got the shrink treatment from the photo department at Elle in 2007, but fewer people seem to expect body-positivity - or reality - from a high fashion magazine.)

Yeah, Deschanel hasn't moved as many units as Clarkson or Beyonce. But take a look at that cover photo again. It's sunny and appealing – and it looks like her.

A Better Self In 2010 [WWD]

Earlier: Kelly Clarkson Slimmed Down On Self Via Photoshop

Britain's Liberal Democrats have been pushing for airbrushed ads to carry notice saying they've been altered, and for retouching to be banned entirely in ads aimed at children under 16. As a result of the campaign the A.S.A. has received more than 1,000 complaints about Photoshopped ads in the past three months, but it has refused to tackle the issue because none of the complaints provided scientific evidence that the ads are harmful, according to The Daily Mail.

Now 44 doctors, psychologists, and academics from Britain, the United States, and Australia have submitted a report to the A.S.A. based on more than 100 academic studies worldwide that says:

Media images that depict ultra-thin, digitally altered women models are linked to body dissatisfaction and unhealthy eating in girls and women.

And argues that the advertisements promote:

Unhealthy dieting regimes and problematic eating behaviours (starving, bingeing, and purging), clinical eating disorders (anorexia, bulimia), cosmetic surgery and extreme exercising.

The paper points out that altered images can be harmful to boys as well, saying pictures that exaggerate a model's muscle development encourage, "unhealthy muscle-enhancing behaviors" like taking steroids, and can cause men to suffer from low self-esteem, reports The Telegraph.

Member of Parliament Jo Swinson, who has been leading the campaign, said:

Airbrushing means that women and young girls are being bombarded with images of people with perfect skin, perfect hair and perfect figures which are impossible to live up to.

Making it clear that retouched images represent an unrealistic ideal is a good start, but the campaign only hints at the larger assault on women's self-esteem. According to The Sun, the report mentions the disturbing fact that:

Girls aged 5½ to 7½ reported less body esteem and greater desire for a thinner body after exposure to images or thin dolls.

Barbie may be part of the problem, but the Liberal Democrats aren't taking on Mattel. The party has acknowledged that thinness isn't the only factor giving girls body image issues by calling for cosmetic surgery ads to include success rates. However, the report submitted to the A.S.A. challenged the idea among advertisers that "thin and sexy sells," by citing research that says ads featuring models who are a U.K. size 14 are as effective at selling products as those featuring extremely thin models as long as they are equally attractive. Would every image featuring an actress with a nose job require a disclaimer letting girls know that her perfectly-proportioned face is "impossible to live up to" without the help of a good plastic surgeon?

While there seems to be scientific proof that retouched images are harming women and the Liberal Democrats mean well, it seems unlikely that a disclaimer will make many people stop hating their bodies. Even if retouching were banned altogether, images can still be distorted with lighting and camera techniques. The hope is that that advertisers will start using more natural models, but sadly, the industry would probably just pressure models to be even thinner if their thighs can't be whittled in Photoshop. Larger models may not be the answer either, since a recent study found that overweight women feel worse about themselves after looking a photos of models, whether the models were skinny or not. At any size, models still represent a beauty ideal that most women can't achieve without turning to extreme diets or cosmetic surgery. The idea that there's a certain beauty ideal women should keep striving (and spending more) to attain may be rooted in advertisements, but it's now too ingrained in our culture to be undone by disclaimer in the fine print.

Call For Ban On Airbrushing Ads That Leave Girls Loathing Their Own Bodies [The Daily Mail]
Airbrushed Images Harming Girls And Boys, Experts Say [The Telegraph]
Faked Model Photo Danger For Girls Aged 5 [The Sun]

Earlier: British Lawmakers Take Stand Against Photoshop
Study: Even Plus-Size Models Lower Self-Esteem

As someone who also chain smokes and enjoys a wine or two every night, I'm terrified of age progression photos, although they seem to be a pretty good argument for quitting bad habits. Age progression—via Photoshop—is also pretty useful when it comes to missing children. (And pretty accurate, too. The one that authorities created for Jaycee Dugard was remarkably true to life.)

For Betty, I assumed that she would maintain her figure and hair as much as she could, being so vain and all. But 20 years in the future, before the ubiquity of Botox and laser treatments, Betty would begin feeling the effects of the life she's lived, including wrinkles, age spots, thinning hair, and a growing nose.


For Don, it seemed to make the most sense to base his aging on Frank Sinatra's. However, I was shocked as hell when the liver spots, rosacea, deep lines, enlarged nose and ears, and receding hairline made him a dead-ringer for Mel Gibson.

Danziger's appearance on a Women at NBCU breakfast panel last Wednesday shows she really needs to learn when to cut her losses — we don't need to hear her say that "Kelly liked the picture" for the eight zillionth time, or that "we did not make her look skinny, we made her look better." But the real kicker is her explanation for whittling Clarkson away in the first place. She says,

[P]eople like to say, "Oh, the media is the problem." I would say that, if we're really honest, the reason some of these magazines get bought by people is because they want to see that image. It is a consumer-driven market. If you put something on the newsstand and they don't like it, it won't get bought.

She goes on to say we could "debate [...] all day" whether magazine Photoshopping or a consumer desire for unrealistic images came first — but it's clear which side she falls on. And even though she thinks her consumers demand Photoshopping, she still claims that Self doesn't really use it that much. The magazine is "as honest as they come," she says — except, presumably, for the whole Kelly Clarkson thing.

Danziger's argument that she's just giving her customers what they demand echoes Cosmo editor Kate White's "contribution" to the whole Ralph Lauren Photoshopping mess last week. In her (rather superfluous) appearance on the Today Show, White said,

I think women have to protest - and back it up. Because sometimes women say they want real girls in stories, but often those stories don't rate as well. Or if you put a heavy celebrity on the cover it might not sell as well. So women have to complain, and then back it up with their actions. Their pocketbooks.

Both editors neatly pass the buck to magazine readers, whose appetites they claim really dictate how teensy a cover girl must be. This is pretty disingenuous, especially given that women's magazine editors set themselves up as tastemakers in so many other areas. They sell ads — and get free shit for advertorial features — largely by convincing companies that women will buy the products they recommend. They position themselves as trendsetters at the forefront of fashion — not followers who just report on what women are already wearing. Especially in the case of Self, they give health and lifestyle advice, and while they sometimes feature reader opinions, they don't base all their tips on workouts readers already perform. Women's magazines are completely in the business of telling women what to wear, what to buy, what to eat, and what to do, and the idea that women tell them what to put on the cover is ludicrous.

Moreover, it's hard to even evaluate Danziger's claims about readers' tastes, since they don't really have very many options. There is no mainstream American women's magazine that features un-Photoshopped models of all shapes and sizes. There's Bust, but with its smaller budget and bimonthly publication schedule, it's not a real competitor. Really, the major women's magazines represent something of a cartel of unrealistic female images, and women searching for an alternative will have a hard time "voting with their pocketbooks" — there's nothing to vote for.

Of course, it's true that Danziger and White are in the business of selling magazines, not making us all hate our bodies. Their reluctance to experiment with, say, not Photoshopping probably has as much to do with fear of the unknown — and perhaps fear of advertiser response — as it does with misogyny and sizeism. But as I've said before, women's magazines are in financial trouble, and the old formulas clearly aren't working so well anymore. In fact, the biggest ad gains this month were reported, not by Cosmo or Self, but by Southern Living and Real Simple, which sport food, not models, on their covers, and which credit their success to helping women actually do stuff. So maybe it's time for editors like White and Danziger to stop making excuses about what consumers want, and give them some actual choices.

3 Minute Ad Age: October 20, 2009 [AdAge]
Top 5 Monthlies: Giving Women What They Want [MinOnline]

Earlier: Kelly Clarkson Slimmed Down On Self Via Photoshop

Ralph Lauren Fires Photoshopped Model For Being "Too Fat"

Earlier: Ralph Lauren Takes Responsiblity For Photoshop Of Horrors
Ralph Lauren's Ridiculous Photoshop; More Ridiculous Rage

Hamilton had counted Ralph Lauren among her clients since she started modeling at the age of 15 and she says that she considered the people who worked there her second family — at least until April of this year, when Ralph Lauren summarily fired her. The stated reason was that the label dumped Hamilton "as a result of her inability to meet the obligations under her contract with us." What Ralph Lauren allegedly told Hamilton's agency, Next, is that the 5'10" 5'8", 120 lb model had become too fat to fit into its clothing.

Ralph Lauren's behavior since these images came to light, on the blog Photoshop Disasters, has single-handedly turned a small PR crisis into a full-fledged disaster. First, the company had its lawyers try to sue Photoshop Disasters and BoingBoing, the second blog to pick up the story, for copyright infringement for reporting on the ad. The threats — and the fact that Ralph Lauren managed to get Photoshop Disasters' ISP, Google-owned Blogspot, to remove the image — not only came across as ridiculous and bullying, but only served to draw hundreds of thousands of eyes to the story. (The Daily Mail, Huffington Post, Telegraph, Current TV, and Mother Jones, among other outlets, jumped on the story with more or less alacrity.)

The company's apology, when it came, seemed sincere — but today, Ralph Lauren sought to distance itself from its decision to create and run the ad: "The image in question was mistakenly released and used in a department store in Japan and was not the approved image which ran in the U.S."

And for it to emerge that the model in question is a justifiably pissed-off employee that the brand threw under the bus six months ago for being "fat" — that's just the cherry on the Ralph Lauren public relations shit pie. The company's admission of "responsibility" for the ad, coming after its attempt to minimize the ad's significance, rings as hollow as its protestation that Hamilton is a "beautiful and healthy" woman, and that the Photoshop incident had "absolutely no connection" to the company's decision to fire her. Which is it? Is the ad a one-time "error" that was "unapproved," or is it something Ralph Lauren is prepared to take true responsibility for? Is Hamilton "beautiful and healthy," or is she unable to meet the obligations of her contract because of her weight?

Models get fired, or simply passed over for work, all the time for being overweight, but it's a practice that rarely gets addressed publicly. (Not least because anyone outside the industry might struggle to grasp by what measure a size 4 twenty-something who's represented a brand for nearly a decade could be considered "overweight.") There have even been cases where models who have had eating disorders, having entered treatment, have lost work or agency contracts because of their choice to try and get better. As much as it sucks that Hamilton was fired so coldly, it's kind of thrilling that she's willing to talk about it.

Did it never occur to Ralph Lauren to fire the photographer? Or the retoucher who created the image of the near-death Bratz doll Hamilton? Why didn't it consider firing the person who was responsible for releasing the image, if indeed that was a "mistake"? Why did Ralph Lauren's sights immediately fall to rest on the person involved who bore the least responsibility for the drastically altered image in question: the model?

What else isn't so great? Hearing some of Cosmopolitan editor Kate White's statements in the full segment. It seems to be the rule that any model, when doing television appearances, needs to be chaperoned by a fashion magazine editor, à la Ali Michael and Teen Vogue's Amy Astley. At least, that's the only explanation I could come up with for White's presence. After grabbing Hamilton's spotlight and hitching her wagon to the attendant publicity by offering her an 8-page spread in her magazine — a favor that Hamilton, having graced the covers of numerous international editions of Elle, Harper's Bazaar, and Vogue, including one of my all-time favorite issues of Vogue Paris, hardly need lower herself to accept — White, much like Ralph Lauren, set about walking the delicate line of admitting that there might be a "problem" in fashion without doing anything so creative as taking responsibility for it.

"It really starts with the sample clothes, because they've down-sized, they're now like a size 2 or 4," says White. "To some degree, it relates to the Kate Moss era. Before then, supermodels like Cindy Crawford and Christy Brinkley, they were really curvy. But they got skinnier and skinnier, and the clothes got smaller, and so it creates this cycle where you have to fit in the clothes to get the job, and then the models get smaller and that's who we have to use in fashion stories."

Notice the absence of subjects in that sentence: "it" creates a cycle. (A cycle! Those can be really hard to stop.) "It" relates to Kate Moss, or at least her "era." "The clothes" got smaller. (All by themselves?) The underweight ideal body that the fashion industry promulgates to women all around the world — and the underweight bodies that real fashion models are required to maintain, and which some cannot but maintain through unhealthy means — are problems that everyone is prepared to "acknowledge" in the fashion industry. People write letters about it. They institute meaningless, unenforced laws. What nobody has yet done is actually make a serious, thoughtful attempt to confront these problems of the industry's function — and this is an industry which is structured to punish the sufferer of an eating disorder who decides to enter treatment — and to solve them.

White's perspective on the basic problem is troubling: "The models" got smaller — seemingly of our own volition — and that's who she "has" to use in fashion stories.

The Cosmopolitan editor goes on to say, "I think women have to protest — and back it up. Because sometimes women say they want real girls in stories, but often those stories don't rate as well. Or if you put a heavy celebrity on the cover it might not sell as well. So women have to complain, and then back it up with their actions. Their pocketbooks." If we don't have the magazines we deserve, it's really our own fault.

I guess when you have a posse of gorgeous, iconic ladies — Nine's Nicole Kidman, Marion Cotillard, Penelope Cruz and Kate Hudson — you feel obliged to make them look as good as possible. But for the love of natural lighting: Why so much Photoshop?

Sassybella asks, "Did Annie Leibovitz or Vogue go a little airbrush crazy?" The answer is a resounding YES. I can't wait to see this cover in person, to try and figure out what how someone cobbled these women into an image. I'm guessing Leibovitz shot them each separately and then did a composite, but when you have a person who doesn't cast a shadow on the lady next to her, then that person is a vampire.

Leibovitz makes composite images quite often; take this photograph of Judi Dench and Helen Mirren, for instance:

Blogger Jeffrey Saddoris has read Leibovitz's book, At Work, in which she writes:

"The picture of Hellen Mirren and Judi Dench in the car was made in two different places. It was fun directing Judi Dench to act like she was talking to someone who wasn't actually there. She was saying, 'You bitch. How could you have done this to me? Why did you do that to me?' And she had that look. If we had been using film, we would have to stitch two frames together, but since we were shooting digitally, we built the final picture in the computer."

On another forum, a poster dissects the Leibovitz Mad Men shoot:

The commenter writes:

It appears that Annie shot the scene in separate composites. She took a shot of January Jones from where she is standing in the video still, THEN after she got what she wanted she moved to the left and shot Jon Hamm exactly positioned and lit how she wanted. Then I would assume she stood back and took some overall shots of the room that would later be stitched together to form the overall piece.

NOW, from an overall look the photograph appears classy and fit to the time piece and most people would walk away from it without any negativity, and I still think its a great shot... but the perspective now just bothers me. It appears as though she isn't even looking directly at him. Her overall size appears smaller than him. Also, if you look near his ass the straight line that runs on the wall... isn't so straight, its very apparent that was a poor clone job.

Even though the cover is a nightmare, there's a gorgeous shot of the ladies on the inside:

Instead of looking like a hallucinatory vision or Hollywood interpretation of the "Footprints" poem, this actually looks like a photograph of women, sitting on a couch — next to each other and existing in the same time-space continuum. What a concept.

Prima Time [Vogue]
Yay Or Nay? Annie Leibovitz Over Airbrushes Another US Vogue Cover [Sassybella]
Photo139 – Week 2 [Saddoris]
Annie Leibovitz thread [Nature Forum]

Earlier: Nine Throws Down The Oscar Gauntlet
Other Ladies Agree: Annie Leibovitz's Latest Is Painfully Lame
Photo Finish: (Annie Leibovitz & People Of Color)