According to the article, the National Eating Disorders Foundation (NEDA) and the Los Angeles-based women's brand and movement Off Our Chests are partnering to rally consumer and congressional support for their proposed "Media and Public Health Act" (MPHA).
.png)
During a time when bills like SOPA are threatening freedom of the Internet, it's refreshing to see a bill that I believe could do some good for a change. And it wouldn't involve censoring material, but rather disclosing more information to the consumer.
If passed, the MPHA would require "truth-in-advertising" labels to be placed on all ads and editorial content in which the human figure has been altered by digital manipulation or other means. Sparked by the rise of eating disorders in the U.S., particularly among females, this bill aims to help address that problem by lessening the impact these damaging ads can cause.
The article states that the average age that girls start dieting dropped to age 8 in 1990, compared to 14 in 1970. Remember in class when we discussed the rise of advertising - particularly advertising targeted at children - in the 1990s? Although advertising is not solely to blame for this, I don't think anyone could deny that it does have a massive impact. Something is clearly wrong with our media industry here, and it's about time someone has taken action to fix it.
In my opinion, if the music industry has to slap "Parental Advisory" labels on albums with explicit lyrics and the movie industry has to slap a "Restricted" rating on movies with inappropriate content, then why shouldn't advertisers be required to disclose when they've digitally manipulated photographs of the human body?
As the article notes, this law would create no cost for the government, the advertising agency or the consumer. Disclosing that a dress model has been digitally altered in a photograph isn't going to influence my decision of whether or not to buy the dress. But it might help steer a young girl who idolizes that model away from the dangerous path of eating disorders.
Check out the full article here: MPHA Press Release
Excellent discovery Amber!! I will in fact be talking about gender images in advertising in another class-- SPC 185 Media and Society-- next week and I intend to mention the MPHA to them. i hope you write something about this for the Chronicle. Hint hint.
ReplyDelete