All those women’s fashion ads that show models with 12-inch waists you know are clearly Photoshopped? The American Medical Association is asking the ad industry to stop tweaking photographs that way because of the unhealthy message they send.
“Advertisers commonly alter photographs to enhance the appearance of models’ bodies, and such alterations can contribute to unrealistic expectations of appropriate body image — especially among impressionable children and adolescents,” the AMA said in a statement.
“A large body of literature links exposure to media-propagated images of unrealistic body image to eating disorders and other child and adolescent health problems.”
In the policy adopted by the AMA at its annual meeting this week, the group encourages advertising companies to work with both “public and private sector organization concerned with child and adolescent health to develop guidelines for advertisements, especially those appearing in teen-oriented publications, that would discourage the altering of photographs in a manner that could promote unrealistic expectations of appropriate body image.”
It’s not only female models who are Photoshopped, of course; male models are too, the AMA is addressing all such ads. . .