The American Medical Association has come forth with a policy against advertisers altering images of bodies, “especially among impressionable children and adolescents.” Great, but we’d add magazines to that policy.
At its annual meeting, the AMA noted that “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.” They want to “encourage advertising associations to work with public and private sector organizations 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.”
Also, shoutout to our man Ralph Lauren by a doctor quoted in the press release: “In one image, a model’s waist was slimmed so severely, her head appeared to be wider than her waist. We must stop exposing impressionable children and teenagers to advertisements portraying models with body types only attainable with the help of photo editing software.”
Now let’s see if anyone listens.