Airbrushed adverts banned!

[LRDTheFeministDragon]

Here:

www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jul/27/loreal-julia-roberts-ad-banned

They banned the advert because the producers didn't even want the Advertising Standards Agency to see an un-airbrushed image to compare with the finished product - isn't that awful?!

I'm afraid I'd not heard of Jo Swanson, the MP who helped get the ban, before. Sounds good, though.

[Kveta]

Jo Swinson is great :) she's only young, too! was a year or two above me at school. She is very into body confidence, and has been campaigning for it for a long time.

[ChaosTrulyReigns]

Oh, LRD I thought you were telling us of a complete ban.



Still, this could be a very good starting point.

Fantastic.

[ChaosTrulyReigns]

She's on Twitter, am just perusing her website, but can't find any mention of this campaigning.

[ChaosTrulyReigns]

Ahha, The Campaign for Body Confidence.

[Kveta]

she mentions it a LOT on facebook :) www.facebook.com/#!/joswinson

[ChaosTrulyReigns]

Thank you.

[LRDTheFeministDragon]

Oh, I'm so sorry chaos! I just realized it looked like that in the title. I wish!

Kveta - how exciting, you know her?

She sounds good. I was stunned at those pictures - they are beautiful women but look younger than me in those, and I'm 26. It's absurd.

[Kveta]

LRD - not really, it's one of my very tenous claims to 'fame' :o

(but she does know my mum (from campaigning) and I have met her in the HoP once when I was presenting a poster there, and we reminisced about school :o she's a lovely person :))

[TartyDoris]

Should definately be banned for cosmetics ads.

[mumwithdice]

Those came up on the news yesterday. I remember the bit where they go over the stories they're going to feature and when that came up, they asked "Why have these ads been banned?"

I answered "Because they're so airbrushed it hurts" much to FIL (retired photography teacher)'s amusement.

Does anyone not know that most ads are airbrushed?

[Empusa]

"Does anyone not know that most ads are airbrushed?"

You'd be amazed!

I once sat with a colleague who was making comparisons with herself and the images in a magazine, so I went through image by image and pointed out all the adjustments made. She had no idea.

[mumwithdice]

I thought that would be the answer. I was hoping it wouldn't be. No wonder we all have such strange ideas about what women should look like.

[Empusa]

People have definitely been conditioned to believe women should look a certain way, often totally physically impossible :(

[LRDTheFeministDragon]

I don't really thinking knowing they're airbrushed is enough. In a way it is worse that we're saying to people, 'no, you will never look good enough. Don't even expect to be happy with the way you look, you will only look good in a photo with airbrush, never in real life'.

I know a woman who got married round about when I did and we were looking at each other's wedding pics. She is a very attractive woman, model figure, etc. She got a professional photographer to take shoots that look like something out of Vogue and I commented on how stunning they were. She replied in a very matter-of-fact way 'yes, it was really worth it, he airbrushed them and touched them up so they look good'. I just couldn't believe it - she felt she needed that to look 'good', on her wedding day, as a really beautiful woman.

I find it disturbing because it seems to move back to women-as-objects if we're encouraged to think we'll only look good in pictures.

[floyjoy]

Off- topic, I know, so sorry, but if we're talking about Jo Swinson, Lib Dem MP with a Scottish constituency, she voted in favour of the increased tuition fees for English university students and therefore holds some responsibilty for young people (not her Scottish constituents) accruing huge debt before starting their careers. And her office sent out a slightly snippy standard email to those of us who registered our disappointment at her choice! She is a rising star of the Lib Dems and until that point seemed one of the better MPs - but she wants to rise through the ranks, I guess. I've seen her around, seems nice and thought she might take as stand as some of her Lib Dem colleagues did. Shame.

Ads- It's sad that knowing they are airbrushed doesn't stop them having a powerful visual impact on people in terms of positively responding to the model's appearance. Airbrushing is one only of the problems with them. I read somewhere that a Twiggy ad was also banned a while ago - maybe it's just the ones with women over 40 that merit action - 'hey, no way can that old woman look that young!' as if any models look that 'good' in RL.

[TrillianAstra]

I want to see the same woman, shot in the same light, with one side of her face having the thing (mascara, foundation, lipstick) and one side not. That would persuade me that your foundation would make me look as if I were lit with an inner light.

[floyjoy]

Like the old anti-dandruff shampoo adverts - they were pretty unglamorous.

[LRDTheFeministDragon]

floy - that's a shame to hear.

I don't know that I mind 'aspirational' ads - but some of them take the piss. I'm thumbing through back issues of Vogue atm (it's ok, I handed it my feminist badge a few hours ago - actually I'm looking for pictures to take to the hairdresser so she knows what colour to dye me), and there's a brilliant pic of Vivienne Westwood modelling her own accessories line - it may well be airbrushed but the lines are there and she's not ridiculously slim or identikit-looking. And the ads obviously work fine or she wouldn't keep making money!

[Anniegetyourgun]

Heard the item on the radio, cheered.

It might raise a few feminist issues but to me, the central point here is that by airbrushing in an advert for cosmetics or skincare they are basically lying. I know there's a lot of misleading stuff in advertising but blatant untruths are just not on. At least I thought they weren't. (Not that I actually believe adverts or would ever be fooled into believing any product could turn me into Julia Roberts, but still...) Airbrushing, say, a woman's cellulite when she's advertising a swimming costume may be offensive for different reasons, but it isn't lying about the product itself. But if it was an anti-cellulite cream being advertised and they said "see, all the cellulite has gone" but it hadn't really, that would rightly be jumped on. At least I bloody well hope it would.

[LRDTheFeministDragon]

I agree about the lying Annie.

[WhollyGhost]

So this rulling will affect cosmetic adverts aimed at women, what about those aimed at men?

e.g. I stood at a bus stop yesterday, next to a lynx advert featuring a conventionally beautiful, airbrushed model, and the slogan "the cleaner you are, the dirtier you will get".

Because women are intrinsically so dirty. Wank fodder like this featured on bus stops, billboards etc is also affecting body confidence, especially when it comes with a demeaning caption.

[LRDTheFeministDragon]

Ah, no, it's not a ruling. The link explains. Two specific adverts were banned because they flout the existing rules. Sorry, my title is confusing, I know!

But you are quite right - that's a nasty caption.

[ChristinedePizan]

Good to hear this. I was flicking through a magazine at the garden centre yesterday and saw an ad for mascara where it says something along the lines of 'model is wearing lash extensions and fillers'.

So what is the sodding point? Here, buy this mascara, your eyes won't look anything like Eva Longoria's.

The most frightening bit of the story is that they weren't allowed to show the 'before' photos because of contractual obligations. Is it so awful to see real women looking real? How very sad :(