Photoshop and Body Shaming

I'm a huge Margaret Atwood fan and read the Handmaid's Tale, a science fiction novel about a dystopian totalitarian society, years ago. I've been a fan of the Hulu series too. I recently watched the documentary about Atwood, "Margaret Atwood: A Word after a Word after a Word is Power," and was fascinated when she talked about how much of the material for her 1985 novel was based on true events. With that in mind, it's not a huge leap to imagine the recent New York Times story about altered yearbook photos at Bartram Trail High School in St. Johns County, Fla as more real-life material.In the photo above, someone with Photoshop (or a similar image editing program) added a black bar to the young woman's chest to block her cleavage. There are multiple examples in the yearbook where this was done—without the permission or knowledge of the students. They only found out when they opened the yearbook. Edits were only done on images of female students, no male student photos were edited. Students said their first reaction was fury, then they felt sexualized and exposed.Image manipulation is ubiquitous these days. Most of us assume retouching is used for advertising along with a plethora of other uses. Its use for body shaming is not surprising, but definitely alarming, and perhaps we should view it as a huge red flag.Sources:https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/23/us/yearbook-photos-st-johns-girls-altering.html?referringSource=articleSharehttps://www.insider.com/handmaids-tale-based-on-real-world-origins-history-events-2019-8#:~:text=%22The%20Handmaid's%20Tale%22%20may%20be,in%20religious%20and%20political%20history.&text=Its%20real%2Dlife%20origins%20are,30%20years%20after%20its%20publication.

Photoshop: In the Name of the Law

For years there have been debates about truth in advertising and whether or not images that have been digitally altered should be labeled as such. Proponents say that digitally altered images used in beauty ads are harmful to consumers, that these ads are misleading, manipulative, and contribute to negative body images. The documentary “Killing Us Softly” by Jean Kilbourne reveals the misogynistic fantasy world of the undernourished, oversexed, and objectified women. Kilbourne makes an excellent case for how difficult it is to be healthy in a toxic cultural environment when the ideal is impossible to achieve.Opponents of labeling claim that this would require warnings on a multitude of advertising materials. For example, the roads used in car advertising are never as serene as they appear. If labeling is required for all digitally altered images, it would extend across a wide range of graphic imagery and require costly and time-consuming measures to enforce it.A recent New York Times article about an altered image used for a lineup highlights the argument taking place in another arena—not just the world of advertising, but in our justice system. Court records and interviews with police departments across the nation show that this has become a regular practice. Some criminal justice experts say that the practice can actually make lineups fairer by adding features to make it harder to distinguish the perpetrator from other suspects.Mat dos Santos, the legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon, thinks otherwise and states, “If you can’t do a good photo lineup, the answer is not to change the photos; the answer is a photo lineup just shouldn’t be done.”What do you think, have we reached a tipping point? Do we need laws in place when law enforcement is using Photoshop to alter evidence?Sources:https://www.pixelz.com/blog/photoshop-models-laws/https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/24/us/police-photoshop-tattoos.html?smid=nytcore-ios-sharehttps://uclawreview.org/2017/06/21/truth-in-advertising-should-america-ban-photoshop/