The "Self-Esteem Act" For Digitally Altered Photos
Via Overlawyered, two Fred Segal $30 kids' t-shirt selling Angelenos, Seth and Eva Matlins, have a proposal to make magazines have warning labels when photos of models have been Photoshopped. (Are they also going to have warning labels when those in the photos got their assets from Dr. Rubinstein instead of Mother Nature?) From CBS/NY:
Seth Matlin is the founder of offourchests.com, the driving force behind the "Self Esteem Act," which seeks to make consumers more aware of the digital enhancement that occurs in advertising.Matlin believes that digitally enhanced advertising creates unrealistic expectations for young women and that advertisers are giving young girls the impression that they will never be good enough. He argues that by focusing on physical beauty, and by photoshopping already beautiful models, entire segments of the population are being excluded.
"Real women come in all shapes sizes and colors and we can't leave them out of any conversation," says Matlin.
"Real" women? You can be real and real fat, and if you are the latter, unless you've won an Oscar or have a TV audience of eleventy majillion, you ain't getting on the cover of Vogue. If you want to change that, you put out a magazine -- you don't get to tell other magazines what they can run and how they can run it.
And regarding the "crisis!" in teen girls' self-esteem...like this hasn't been part of being a teen girl since the beginning of time? It's up to parents to help their girls have healthy thinking, not the governnanny.
Oh, and looking at Seth's bio, do we think he's...repenting?
Prior to joining Live Nation in February 2009, Seth had spent almost 9 years at Creative Artists Agency, where he was the agency's first hire in its Marketing Department. While there, he represented a portfolio of the world's most iconic brands, providing them strategic and creative guidance as they looked to the power of entertainment and across the breadth of Hollywood to build their brands and drive business results amongst rapidly changing marketing, media and consumer landscapes. While with CAA, Seth lead and participated in hundreds of millions of dollars in transactions and over one billion dollars in marketing activation.
Something tells me Seth was most vociferous in his silence about the evils of unfettered marketing while bringing home the big green ones from CAA.
It's a function of this guy's self-absorption that he assumes it's the digital trickery of photos that's the problem... As if the human heart were facing a bold new threat. Certainly there were women who were intimidated by the fingertip brush control of Fuseli and Rubens, who made women look so alluringly plump. The manipulation of vanity isn't new.
Nor is the complicity of the manipulated. If you think self-esteem comes from something other than doing estimable things, you're partly to blame.
Crid [CridComment at gmail] at November 28, 2011 10:52 PM
Amy Alkon
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2011/11/29/crazy_the_self-.html#comment-2814122">comment from Crid [CridComment at gmail]Right on, Crid.
Amy Alkon at November 28, 2011 11:13 PM
Maybe they should go for warning labels on fast food ads next
"Warning: real burger slapped together by minimum wage worker may not look as good as one plumped and fretted for hours over by food photographer".
I suppose I shouldn't suggest that.
Ltw at November 29, 2011 12:20 AM
I love this
Real women come in all shapes sizes and colors
Really? He's suggesting they change color as well? Looking forward to the white Halle Berry covershot.
Ltw at November 29, 2011 12:22 AM
I don't think he's saying don't use sexy models, he's saying don't photoshop. I agree, which is why I don't buy those magazines.
For women who want something else, there's always Ms. or a myriad of other options.
NicoleK at November 29, 2011 12:27 AM
I think this guy just put himself out of work. Well ok start with the women. Then men too. I can think a few young teen boys might work out to extreme looking at sports magazines and muscle mags. We do not want to have young teen boys practicing and destroying their bodies to possible achieve an unattainable goal of playing a professional sport.
Hell all advertisements should have the reality and real truth on it. I want to see the real age of my models and actors. I think it would be nice to see the next movie poster with Liam Neeson with a warning like "Actor is 59 years old of filming and plays a 40 year old ex spy". Warning: If you are 59 years old you are likely too old to do any of the moves in this movie.
I think the women actresses would love this too. I can already see it now for Glee - Warning the show you are about to see is acted with 20 and 30 years old playing teenagers. Plus all music has been choreographed and edited in professional music studio.
Not just people - everything needs to have the truth told. I think enough people have bought computers, games, electronics, cars, clothes, food, political commercials, that have not lived up to the hype or commercials. Consumers have the right to be protected from themselves.
Commercials will be very easy in the future. The product will be shown in nice mono color back ground. It's name and basic details like size, colors, ingredients, side effects, where it was made, etc will be slowly read to the watcher. Sorry no tag line, action shots, stories, jokes, actors both famous or non as that can misconstrue the products true characteristics.
This is just stupid. What is next comic books have to come with warnings, too. Warning comic contains a fictional storyline - if you are bitten by a radioactive spider, you will likely die. Sorry wearing a cape will not help you fly, either.
Well lets hope they put warning labels on politicians too. Warning this man has cheated on his wife 2 times, has cost you as a tax payer over 35 billion dollars in wasted pork and cronyism. Has voted only 25 percent of the time in relation to his said politics and or platform. Through he did serve in the miltary, he was not posted in any war zone or saw any combat. Etc, etc.
Please protect me.
John Paulson at November 29, 2011 3:19 AM
People still buy magazines? Newsweek sold for a buck - the whole company, not one copy.
MarkD at November 29, 2011 4:18 AM
Oh dear, well I'm just glad folks like Seth Matlins are around to protect us from Photoshopped ads! I'm sure nobody had ever suspected advertising might be digitally altered until he revealed that ugly hidden truth!
Or maybe he could just show us how things like that are done, like one of my daughter's girls' interest magazines did a few years ago (I think it was Discovery Girls). The magazine contained an article explaining in detail how the image of the little girl on the cover had been digitally altered -- stretch the neck a little, touch up the hair a bit, etc. Looking at the before-and-after photos you could see a subtle difference.
I'd bet explaining advertising techniques would be a lot more useful in the long run than "protecting" people from them.
Old RPM Daddy at November 29, 2011 5:48 AM
> I don't think he's saying don't use sexy
> models, he's saying don't photoshop.
No, come on... This is the kind of thinking that has given feminists the (appropriate) reputation of being sexless, coddled little ninny-women, blinded by fear of adult feelings with which they have no field experience.
Listen, any image, especially one in a magazine, is composed to stroke affect. That's why people buy them. Teenage boys know the women in Playboy are going to be underdressed an chilly, OK?
Teenage girls who are soul-crushingly intimidated by magazine imagery deserve to be. God is telling them to take the spoon from the ice cream tub, get up off the couch, pull off that big snugly sweatshirt, and go be useful to somebody... If only themselves.
(The Almighty has instructions for teenage boys during Magazine Time, too.)
Crid [CridComment at gmail] at November 29, 2011 6:26 AM
"The Almighty has instructions for teenage boys during Magazine Time, too."
Uncomplicated ones, usually.
Old RPM Daddy at November 29, 2011 6:38 AM
In case you haven't run across this sort of therapy-speak before, 'Real Women' is a codeword for fat. 'Conversation' means that Seth has appointed himself as the representative of 'real' women.
Photoshopping is good for women. Without it, most models and actresses would be out of work by their early thirties. And it enables 'real' women to comfort themselves with the fact that the pictures they're seeing are retouched. What would be more damaging is the realization that even without the photoshopping, the women they're seeing are still more beautiful than 99% of the population.
jermy at November 29, 2011 7:05 AM
> In case you haven't run across this sort of
> therapy-speak before, 'Real Women' is a
> codeword for fat.
Kinda harsh. The point of civilization is NOT to make women uncomfortable unless they're shaped like 6th-grade boys.
> it enables 'real' women to comfort themselves
> with the fact that the pictures they're seeing
> are retouched.
Dood, these forces just aren't that clever. Or sinister. The Matlins' arguments will collapse on their own if you look straight at 'em.
Crid [CridComment at gmail] at November 29, 2011 8:35 AM
It is the nature of advertisement to decieve. It always has been.....
nuzltr2 at November 29, 2011 8:44 AM
> It is the nature of advertisement to decieve.
> It always has been.....
Exactly!
And it's FUN to be deceived! I don't have a TV, not that it matter much nowadays. But for those first few years, I'd only see TV in hotels. I'd kick off my shoes after some ugly airline flight, turn on the tube and laugh out loud at the commercials and think "Man, I need to get a TV!" And two hours later I'd have seen the same once-funny commercial seven times...
People who rely too heavily on commercial culture deserve to be disappointed. Girls terrorized by glammour photography are complicit in the offense they take.
Crid [CridComment at gmail] at November 29, 2011 9:11 AM
putting on the deaf-dumb-and-blind-kid glasses, doesn't protect you... it just makes you deaf, dumb, and blind.
Spokesidiots like this should come with their own warning: "this person thinks everyone else is more worthless than he, and is taking great pains to make that true."
Perhaps that is always the upshot of this, hopefully subconsciously... you poor dears are worthless, so i am going to protect you... and control you.
On the practical side, the photoshop craze has really made some photographers lazy. You can do astonishing things with how a person looks in camera, without using photoshop. A lot of what we are seeing looks wrong because you can only do so much with photoshop... there needs to be skill behind the camera too. If you pose a woman with hips square on, and then P/S her hips, it's going to look wrong. If she turns on an angle and drops one hip, your eye is drawn correctly, AND you don't have to do anything post production...
Bah, this is why I got out of the business.
SwissArmyD at November 29, 2011 9:19 AM
Seth Matlin is trying to get into somebody's pants
"Matlin believes that digitally enhanced advertising creates unrealistic expectations for young women and that advertisers are giving young girls the impression that they will never be good enough."
Apparenty while working in advertising he never understood the premise of his job
lujlp at November 29, 2011 9:50 AM
And here you go John Paulson
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRAecyOS7ao&feature=related
lujlp at November 29, 2011 9:54 AM
Everyone in the current generation of teens knows this crap is Photoshopped. Or they should.
If parents see this becoming a problem for their kids, they should collect all those "stars without makeup" pics. God, I love those.
MonicaP at November 29, 2011 10:40 AM
How dumb does he think women are? Really, past the age of 10 is there anyone who doesn't know that these women are 1) abnormally genetically gifted 2) attended to by a team of people to get the hair and makeup right, 3) under professional lighting, and 4) fucking photoshopped to oblivion and back.
Elle at November 29, 2011 11:23 AM
Why don't these libtards spend their time convincing politicians to tell the truth?
There's your true perversion of reality.
Harry Bergeron at November 29, 2011 12:31 PM
Why do I need to be warned when the models are photoshopped? Do they expect me to be traumatized by discovering that the model doesn't have the air-brushed look in real life so I need to be prepared in case I one day meet them?
Perhaps they don't want the stalkers to be disappointed.
Patrick at November 29, 2011 1:21 PM
They're Photoshopped, but com'on. They're still pretty enough to get paid work as models.
These magazines are not taking toothless, one-eyed hillbilly women and. via computer magic, turning them into Giselle Bundchen.
There are people out there who are better looking than you are. Get over it and go do something useful with your life.
Conan the Grammarian at November 29, 2011 1:56 PM
Why not just have the Handicapper General make the pretty people wear masks, or cut off their hair, or force feed them candy?
ahw at November 29, 2011 2:29 PM
Hmm. This is NOT Photoshop. Should they be busted for inventing someone entirely?
Radwaste at November 29, 2011 4:15 PM
And how about the ridiculously awesome work of Elena Litvinova, Ryoko-demon, who builds characters out of this world?
Radwaste at November 29, 2011 4:23 PM
heh, Raddy, I didn't know you followed cosplay I've seen Ryoko's stuff around, it's the good stuff, AND she has a good photographer to help with a quality representation.
SwissArmyD at November 29, 2011 5:45 PM
Found some of it at the amazing show that is DragonCon. It's artwork, really. Cosplay's not the only thing there, of course. This year I spent a few minutes in conversation with the Bad Astronomer, Phil Plait, and Assistant Surgeon General of the US, RADM Ali Khan, too. I'm still shaking my head at how little I knew about that job.
Elena was there in 2010 - and I missed her! (She's quite a bit easier to appreciate than the workings of the US Public Health Service.) Other fans have told me that they can find no flaws. She's very serious.
Radwaste at November 29, 2011 5:53 PM
So before digital photography, we altered people's images via makeup, hair dye, clothing, wigs, lighting, lenses (never, ever shoot a portrait with a wide-angle lens), exposure, dodging, burning in, under- and over-developing, enlarging, cropping, dichroic filters, and the occasional (well, more than occasional) hand retouching. And nobody had a problem with any of this, apparently. But throw in the word "digital" and everyone freaks. I guess the 1970s fear of computers never really died out after all.
Cousin Dave at November 29, 2011 6:55 PM
Europe already puts retouching disclaimers on their photos - in tiny print on the photos, they'll put "digital retouching by XX Company" or "this photo has been digitally retouched," next to the hair/makeup credits.
I fail to see how a tiny disclaimer will protect the fragile self-esteem of the viewer. Although I suppose that if Matlin had his way, I'd be wearing a sandwich board that said "Warning: This woman altered by hair, makeup, contacts, and extensive orthodontic work!"
Choika at November 30, 2011 5:32 AM
Warning! Not every aspect of our lives needs legislation. Proceed to live at your own risk.
LauraGr at November 30, 2011 8:16 AM
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