Valerie Boyer--Woman of the Week!

Every once in a while the New York Times Styles section surprises me.  Normally the bastion of out of reach fashion and elitism, yesterday’s section contained an article written about someone who was part of the solution and not the problem for a change.

Meet Valerie Boyer,  a member of French Parliament who has caused a stir in France by drafting a law that requires all digitally altered photographs of people used in advertising to be labeled as retouched.  Her goal:  to destroy the illusion of female perfection that women are bombarded with everyday in the media by reminding them that the images are fake. 
“Retouched photos are a deception, an illusion, and we must think about the consequences” says Boyer. 

The article is here.  If you have time, watch the video that goes along with it, it’s very informative.

Naturally the media is fighting back with their self-serving arguments.  “Michelangelo painted idealized bodies, so the idea of idealized beauty was already there” says Anne-Florence Schmitt, editor of Madame Figaro magazine. And Christine Leiritz, Editor in Chief of Marie Claire takes the position that labels on retouched photographs will only tell the reader what they already know.  Really?  I had no idea that a Ralph Lauren ad with the model Fillipa Hamilton was retouched so that her waist was reduced to the width of her head.  How would I ever know that if someone didn’t tell me?  And how is this NOT a crime?  There’s retouching to clean up a photo and then there’s digital alteration that remakes a body into something that is a physical impossibility and that’s the real issue is here.  A distinction needs to be made between retouching a photo by cleaning up blemishes, stray hairs and brightening and altering an image to the point where it bears no relationship to the original. It’s this kind of deception that is so damaging to women and their self-images and should be stopped.  It’s all gone way too far and I’m thankful that Valerie Boyer is stepping out to do something about it.  Now if we could only get Hilary Clinton to rally around this issue here in the U.S. we might be able to start a world-wide movement.