Digitally Altered Body Image Analysis

The world is facing an enormous public health issue associated with digitally altered photos in the mass media. These photos have created a false sense of reality for what beauty is and an unattainable “ideal” body image. As the overall average weight of women has increased, the models portrayed in the media have gotten smaller and smaller, making this gap between reality and the media ideal even larger. There are a number of countries that have already taken a stand to combat this urgent issue.
In 2009, France proposed a bill to the French National Assembly asking for it to be made illegal for photos to be published that had been retouched or digitally altered without a disclaimer label (Slater et al 107). Siding with France, the United Kingdom also campaigned for disclaimer to be on images that had been digitally enhanced or altered. However, the United Kingdom took it a step further and asked for a “complete ban on digital enhancement for advertisements that target young people less than 16 years of age” (Slater et al 108). The British have also called for warning labels to prevent eating disorders (Slater et al 108). And in 2010, the National Advisory Group on Body Image met in Australia and designed the “Voluntary Industry Code

There have been many studies done in the area of women’s body dissatisfaction and exposure to a “perfect” body image (Tiggemann, Slater, Smyth 1). Several different studies in this specific topic have “confirmed that there is a reliable negative effect of viewing thin ideal media images on body dissatisfaction” (Tiggemann, Slater, Smyth 1). One experiment demonstrated that when women were presented with an altered image and visually compared it to an image of them, their body dissatisfaction increased as they could see their “imperfections” (Tiggemann, Slater, Smyth