Scientists from the USA want tax incentives to combat dangerously false ideals of beauty
Perfect beauties thanks to Photoshop - that's a sad everyday occurrence in advertising. However, the unrealistic ideals of beauty conveyed by digitally manipulated photos have undesirable side effects, particularly eating disorders in young people.
Therefore, researchers from Dickinson College, Harvard University and Michigan State University College of Law are calling for regulatory action against Photoshop mania in a study. In the USA, tax gifts in particular could help.
Dangerously unrealistic ideals
Always a perfect smile and, above all, always a perfect figure: a standard in advertising that is often only achieved thanks to Photoshop.
“Many studies show that exposure to unrealistic beauty standards, such as through digitally altered images, contributes to body dissatisfaction and disrupted weight control behavior,”
says Dickinson psychology professor Suman Ambwani, a co-author of the study. It is therefore important to look at what strategies could be used to address this problem.
“We have known for years how damaging these advertising images are to young people, particularly those struggling with body image and low self-esteem,”
says study lead author S. Breyn Austin, professor of social and behavioral sciences at Harvard.
“What we didn’t know is what options we have to fight against these images.”
This is particularly difficult in the USA, as the upheld right to freedom of expression under the First Amendment also extends to advertisers - bans should be out of the question. It takes creative ideas to get companies to do the right thing, says Austin.
Good time for effective incentives
In their study, the researchers come to the conclusion that, given growing consumer resistance to unrealistic advertising images, the time is ideal to set political incentives against digital image manipulation in advertising. In the USA, tax incentives for companies that avoid excessive photoshopping are a sensible strategy.
In the state of Massachusetts, the Democratic MP Kay Khan has already introduced a bill on this basis, according to which, for example, forgoing editing of skin tone or body shape would be rewarded accordingly.
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In addition to such tax incentives, according to the study, suitable corporate social responsibility initiatives in the USA would probably be a sensible approach in the fight against too much Photoshop in advertising, as these would also probably be legally harmless.
Source: press release
Article image: Shutterstock / Vladimir Gjorgie
Notes:
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