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ShareMumbai: Beauty is skin deep. But Photoshop and other digital software can make it a little more deep. At a time when even men in India have been sold to the ideals of a fair skin and the ultimate body, the move by the French parliament to consider a bill purporting to attach a warning label to all touched up advertising images is a remarkable step.
It isn't surprising that a country like France is leading the international movement to tone down these sexed up advertising images. At the centre of most revolutions in Europe - democracy, existentialism, sexual liberation and gay rights - it is only fitting that the French rise and raise a din about advertising's worst kept secret.
For sometime now an interesting mail forward featuring some reputed Hollywood faces has been doing the rounds on the chain email circuits across the world.
The mail with picture attachments depict actresses like Cameron Diaz and Penelope Cruz before and after an image 'touch up'. The contrast is striking. Compared to the touched up images where these women look like goddesses, their 'real' pictures show them as what they are: human beings replete with pimples and blemishes on their faces. One isn't making a case for rejecting aesthetic appeal in popular media and culture.
However a warning informing the audience that the picture they see isn't actually real goes a long way in creating a healthy attitude towards the human body. Over the years, advertising executives have often been blamed for rampant anorexia (keeping hungry to stay slim) that has afflicted the middle classes in first world societies.
If passed the proposed legislation will pave the way for serious thinking on the effects of advertising on healthy living attitudes of people in countries like India where the beauty bug is now a multi-billion dollar enterprise.
