Airbrushed images and provocative fashion advertisements are sending the wrong message to young women. I caught up with leading psychologist Dr Linda Papadopoulos to find out what she thinks...
Airbrushing photos of models in fashion magazines may seem harmless enough - a slimmer stomach here, a more shapely arm there, all in the name of selling a lipstick, bag or mini dress. But the practice is widespread across advertising and the media and it is destroying lives, by making young women hate their own bodies and aspire to impossible levels of physical perfection.
Dr Linda Papadopoulos, a respected clinical psychologist is urging the media to curb the practice of "airbrushing" - particularly in promotional material aimed at young girls. She believes that these distorted images of beauty have a “drip-drip effect” on young women who may not realize that many pictures are airbrushed.
'Whereas I can pick up a magazine and say "Clearly this is lighting and make-up", I'm pretty sure that a 13-year-old can't. 'I'm not saying people should stop airbrushing, but they need to be honest about it.'Subconsciously this could make a big difference because it will separate fantasy from reality,' she added. 'It's going to say this is not a realistic ideal - people have pores on their face and if someone's waist was that small their lungs would collapse.' Dr Papadopoulos warns "pictures of perfection" cause huge emotional and psychological problems for teenage girls and young women.
Most recently, pictures of Twiggy taken during a trip to the supermarket suggested that photos for anti-ageing cream Olay had been heavily altered. And last October Fillippa Hamilton, a size 4 model who worked for Ralph Lauren, was fired after the fashion designer suggested she was too fat. The firing was followed by a scandal over an ad featuring Hamilton that was digitally modified by Lauren and her head looked bigger than her pelvis.
In a world where no woman can be too thin - in which singer Victoria Beckham and Kate Moss are acceptable shapes for womanhood - every healthy woman must see herself as overweight. 'Could be thinner' means 'should be thinner'. The belief that 'thin and sexy sells' is leading to an increase in eating disorders and depression in ordinary women, who believe that they don’t measure up.
Every woman's magazine is full of photos of airbrushed stars that seem to have little else to tell us except how they stay slim. “The mass media promotes and reinforces an idealised notion of beauty for both men and women, presenting standards – of thinness for women and of muscularity for men – that few can ever hope to achieve,” Dr Papadopoulos argues.
And while anorexia isn't caught off fashion pages, it would be foolish to deny that there is no impact. Any one of a normal size, let alone overweight, or certainly with a problem to start off with, cannot flick through pretty well any glossy magazine without feeling the urge to diet or to look ‘better’. Dr Papadopoulos believes that young girls are increasingly suffering from eating disorders because of `appalling' pressure from advertisers and magazines to look thin.
Today, 40 years after the first women's liberation conference, there’s an increasing emphasis on how women appear. But who is responsible for this pressure? Politicians don't really want to know because surely this is also one of the results of an unfettered, globalised free market. An uninhibited market will sell the lowest common denominator, sex. And sex not only sells itself but everything else, too.
Now have we reached a situation where are witnessing extreme levels of nudity in advertising, film and print media – not to mention provocative music videos by big name stars such as Beyonce , Christina Aguilera, Britney Spears and Rihanna. Before extreme thinness was the issue but, now the hyper sexualisation of women in the media is becoming an even more sinister trend.
Women on TV,fashion magazines, film, music and advertising are portrayed in a state of almost constant arousal. To young woman the message is clear,looking 'sexy' is of paramoun importance.This message confuses men as much as women and fosters a culture of machmiso.If we were to believe the messages these adverts sell us , we'd think that women were sexually available at all times ...pretty 'things' waiting to be chosen.But how did this sinister situation develop?” I think that it has crept up on us during the past two decades, “Dr Papadopoulos argues.
“ I was born in the 70’s and I remember when I was growing up, Benny Hill was still seen as being very shocking but, today, something like that would be considered to be mild.” She also points out that the fashion industry is partly to blame for promoting a distorted size 0 body image to women. “Fashion advertising is also part of the problem and now, more than ever before, fashion companies are using increasingly sexual images of women to sell their products.”
Dr Papadopoulos also called for curbs on magazines targeted at teenage and preteen girls arguing that these publications stressed the need for girls to present themselves as sexually desirable in order to attract male attention. She warned: "Sexualised ideals of young, thin, beauty lead to ideals of bodily perfection that are difficult to attain, even for the models, which perpetuates the industry practice of "airbrushing" photographs.
These faked pictures can lead people to believe in a reality that does not exist, which can have a particularly detrimental effect on adolescents. "In our celebrity-obsessed society, women are habitually heralded as successful and celebrated for their sex appeal and appearance - with little reference to their intellect or abilities, Dr Papadopoulos said. This "sends out a powerful message to young people about what is of value and what they should focus on", she added.
Airbrushed images of models and celebrities alter our perceptions of what's normal or desirable. No one is saying that the media is entirely to blame - indeed, I believe we need a cultural revolution when it comes to our ideas about beauty. We have come to define beauty in an extremely narrow way - the media is a part of this, but we all buy into it to some extent. Promoting the belief that we must achieve that perfect look is highly profitable - it gets us buying all manner of products in the hope that the next one will be the one that makes us who we want to be.
We must change our ideas about women's looks - starting with airbrushing
*SUBSCRIBE TO RECEIVE DAILY FASHION, BEAUTY AND CELEBRITY BLOG POSTS.
Airbrushing photos of models in fashion magazines may seem harmless enough - a slimmer stomach here, a more shapely arm there, all in the name of selling a lipstick, bag or mini dress. But the practice is widespread across advertising and the media and it is destroying lives, by making young women hate their own bodies and aspire to impossible levels of physical perfection.
Dr Linda Papadopoulos, a respected clinical psychologist is urging the media to curb the practice of "airbrushing" - particularly in promotional material aimed at young girls. She believes that these distorted images of beauty have a “drip-drip effect” on young women who may not realize that many pictures are airbrushed.
'Whereas I can pick up a magazine and say "Clearly this is lighting and make-up", I'm pretty sure that a 13-year-old can't. 'I'm not saying people should stop airbrushing, but they need to be honest about it.'Subconsciously this could make a big difference because it will separate fantasy from reality,' she added. 'It's going to say this is not a realistic ideal - people have pores on their face and if someone's waist was that small their lungs would collapse.' Dr Papadopoulos warns "pictures of perfection" cause huge emotional and psychological problems for teenage girls and young women.
The issue of airbrushing first gained wide publicity in 2003 when a heavily retouched image of Kate Winslet appeared on the cover of GQ magazine - much to her annoyance. Its editor confessed the picture had been "digitally altered". Keira Knightley's cleavage was ‘enhanced ’in posters for the film King Arthur in 2004, but four years later the actress denied authorization for her bust to be boosted in posters for The Duchess.
Most recently, pictures of Twiggy taken during a trip to the supermarket suggested that photos for anti-ageing cream Olay had been heavily altered. And last October Fillippa Hamilton, a size 4 model who worked for Ralph Lauren, was fired after the fashion designer suggested she was too fat. The firing was followed by a scandal over an ad featuring Hamilton that was digitally modified by Lauren and her head looked bigger than her pelvis.
In a world where no woman can be too thin - in which singer Victoria Beckham and Kate Moss are acceptable shapes for womanhood - every healthy woman must see herself as overweight. 'Could be thinner' means 'should be thinner'. The belief that 'thin and sexy sells' is leading to an increase in eating disorders and depression in ordinary women, who believe that they don’t measure up.
Every woman's magazine is full of photos of airbrushed stars that seem to have little else to tell us except how they stay slim. “The mass media promotes and reinforces an idealised notion of beauty for both men and women, presenting standards – of thinness for women and of muscularity for men – that few can ever hope to achieve,” Dr Papadopoulos argues.
And while anorexia isn't caught off fashion pages, it would be foolish to deny that there is no impact. Any one of a normal size, let alone overweight, or certainly with a problem to start off with, cannot flick through pretty well any glossy magazine without feeling the urge to diet or to look ‘better’. Dr Papadopoulos believes that young girls are increasingly suffering from eating disorders because of `appalling' pressure from advertisers and magazines to look thin.
“The effects of this are apparent – eating disorders are on the rise,"she reveals. “The eating disorder charity BEAT estimates that 1.6 million people in the UK have an eating disorder. The vast majority of these– some 1.4 million – are female and now we’re starting to see what happens when you tweak the message– young women need to be not only thin, but also sexually desirable. As anorexia increases so now does the number of young women having breast implants at an increasingly young age.”
Today, 40 years after the first women's liberation conference, there’s an increasing emphasis on how women appear. But who is responsible for this pressure? Politicians don't really want to know because surely this is also one of the results of an unfettered, globalised free market. An uninhibited market will sell the lowest common denominator, sex. And sex not only sells itself but everything else, too.
Now have we reached a situation where are witnessing extreme levels of nudity in advertising, film and print media – not to mention provocative music videos by big name stars such as Beyonce , Christina Aguilera, Britney Spears and Rihanna. Before extreme thinness was the issue but, now the hyper sexualisation of women in the media is becoming an even more sinister trend.
“ I was born in the 70’s and I remember when I was growing up, Benny Hill was still seen as being very shocking but, today, something like that would be considered to be mild.” She also points out that the fashion industry is partly to blame for promoting a distorted size 0 body image to women. “Fashion advertising is also part of the problem and now, more than ever before, fashion companies are using increasingly sexual images of women to sell their products.”
Dr Papadopoulos also called for curbs on magazines targeted at teenage and preteen girls arguing that these publications stressed the need for girls to present themselves as sexually desirable in order to attract male attention. She warned: "Sexualised ideals of young, thin, beauty lead to ideals of bodily perfection that are difficult to attain, even for the models, which perpetuates the industry practice of "airbrushing" photographs.
These faked pictures can lead people to believe in a reality that does not exist, which can have a particularly detrimental effect on adolescents. "In our celebrity-obsessed society, women are habitually heralded as successful and celebrated for their sex appeal and appearance - with little reference to their intellect or abilities, Dr Papadopoulos said. This "sends out a powerful message to young people about what is of value and what they should focus on", she added.
Airbrushed images of models and celebrities alter our perceptions of what's normal or desirable. No one is saying that the media is entirely to blame - indeed, I believe we need a cultural revolution when it comes to our ideas about beauty. We have come to define beauty in an extremely narrow way - the media is a part of this, but we all buy into it to some extent. Promoting the belief that we must achieve that perfect look is highly profitable - it gets us buying all manner of products in the hope that the next one will be the one that makes us who we want to be.
We must change our ideas about women's looks - starting with airbrushing
*SUBSCRIBE TO RECEIVE DAILY FASHION, BEAUTY AND CELEBRITY BLOG POSTS.
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