#HTE

France’s New Law: Photoshopped Images Must be Labeled as Having Been Retouched

A new law has gone into effect in France: As of this week, “It will be mandatory to use the label ‘retouched photo’ alongside any photo used for commercial purposes when the body of a model has been modified by an image-editing software to either slim or flesh out her figure,” according to French news organization France 24. (It’s not clear if the gender pronoun actually exists within the law itself, or if the law will apply to images of male models as well.)

The fashion industry has been promoting unrealistically thin women’s bodies for decades, and French lawmakers point to estimates that 600,000 people suffer from eating disorders in France as the result. It’s unclear if the law will yield the hoped-for changes, or if fashion rags will simply flout the law and pay the fine (which maxes out at €37,500). Still, France should be lauded for at least attempting to tackle the problem, on multiple fronts. Another French law requires models working in France to have a certificate signed off on by a doctor attesting that their Body Mass Index is at a healthful level.

In America we obviously have the doctored-model’s-body photo problem as well, sometimes propagated by “celebrities” themselves. We also, perhaps perversely, have a food-photography-related problem: While we edit our images of models to make them look thinner, we fluff up our photographs of fast food to make them look thicker. Case in point: Have you ever seen a Big Mac that actually looks like the ones in the photos?