Talk about getting the cold shoulder.
I’m used to getting the stink eye from Andre Leon Talley and his Vogue cohorts. But generally my friends at fashion glossies Harper’s Bazaar or Elle are quite helpful when it comes to answering my questions. But then again, I had never approached them with questions about how much they Photoshop the celebrities that grace the pages of their magazines.
But there’s a growing storm against making women look like flawless goddesses. This is a debate that has been raging for years, with complaints about fashion magazine covers offering Photoshopped nips and tucks to the point where celebrities are practically unrecognizable - think back to cover controversies involving Keira Knightley, Kate Winslet, and Kim Kardashian. But the charge against Photoshopping is picking up steam, at least in Britain, where political parties are starting to get involved. Wait, did I just hear the sound of Madonna putting a for-sale sign in front of her London home?
Last week in England, Liberal Democrats from the House of Parliament released 42 recommendations to help improve the lives of women in the UK, but the one recommendation that has gathered the most attention calls for disclaimers to run on advertisements that have been airbrushed. This issue became big news when, shortly after the recommendations were released, a series of ads for an anti-aging product ran featuring iconic 1960s model Twiggy. In the ads, the soon-to-be-60-year-old model is glowing with youthful vigor. But when untouched photos surfaced, they showed that Twiggy actually has the face of a 60-year-old. Insert surprised gasp here.
“What we would like is a disclaimer,’’ Jo Swinson, a member of Parliament who worked on the report, told me this week. “Not necessarily a standard disclaimer, but a sentence basically saying what has been done to the photograph. Has the waist been nipped in? Have the thighs been slimmed down? We’d like to ban Photoshopping all together in adverts aimed at children, because they’re particularly vulnerable.’’
The British government can work through the agency that oversees the advertising industry to make some of these recommendations reality. Swinson says she hopes magazines will follow suit. No one is saying that the use of computer tools should be eliminated. It’s standard practice to fix blemishes or enhance color, but there does seem to be a fine line between cleaning up a photo and completely altering it.
“I really do miss the old-school covers, where you could see the expression on someone’s face,’’ celebrity stylist Rachel Zoe said on the phone from Los Angeles. “It makes me sad when I see someone who I know is beautiful, and I think, ‘Why did they make her look like someone else?’ Sometimes it can go too far.’’
Nigel Barker, who has photographed for publications such as GQ in addition to serving as a judge on “America’s Next Top Model,’’ sounds like he has little patience for the idea of government getting involved in the Photoshopping debate. He thinks government should “find more important issues that need addressing.’’ He says photographers and editors were retouching photos long before the advent of the digital camera, and that virtually all digital photographs are retouched. He says that the benefits of good Photoshopping far outweigh the cons.
“The idea is that you want to produce the most flattering image possible,’’ he says. “The reason why talent in the modeling industry is so young is because of this desire to have flawless-looking women. But with good retouching, you can have older-looking women working longer. You can show her maturity, but perhaps you don’t show every wrinkle and line. What you are seeing are older models having longer careers that they never would have had because of retouching.’’
I’m all for models having longer careers, but I also know that I’m tired of seeing actresses and models digitally slimmed down, lightened, and smoothed out. We all know what these women look like in real life (thanks Us Weekly!), and it would occasionally be nice to see them looking a bit more real in the pages of magazines. Yes, even Madonna.
Christopher Muther can be reached at muther@globe.com. 
