Airbrushed A-listers don’t bother me
Earlier this year, a 14-year-old family friend gave me a crash course in airbrushing. Prodding my iphone 6 with the wonderment of a scientist unearthing an Archaean fossil, she sighed, downloaded an app called Airbrush, and with a series of deft strokes and taps proceeded to turn me into a Kardashian. The whole retouching, relighting, mattifying, sculpting, highlighting and slimming process took less than five minutes. “We’ve gone for a celestial filter,” she announced when done. Which seemed apt. The woman on my screen was a world away from me; she was supreme, empyrean, unreal. She was the personification of our “warped” beauty ideals. But was she dangerous?
According to Tory MP Dr Luke Evans, our digitally altered perception of beauty is “fuelling a psychological well-being disaster” in the young. As a member of the Health and Social Care Committee and a GP, Evans has drawn up a Bill which might ban advertising companies and celebrities from secretly Photoshopping their images on social media, or at least force them to “declare” their sneaky tweaks – “Disclaimer: ankles, thighs, waist, breasts, upper arms, facial features and teeth have been enhanced. Eyeballs are model’s own” – in a bid to shut down what the Bill’s supporters have decried as “this world of false perfection”.
At first glance, the proposal seems like a good idea. But there are two immediate problems. The first is that mirages of false perfection have existed since the year dot. Whether it’s Cleopatra using henna and juniper berries to dye her hair, the models and actresses of yesteryear using corsets, amphetamines and tricks of light to slice inches off their vital statistics or some “fitfluencer” digitally removing a couple of ribs, we have, throughout the centuries, been sold a series of beautifully packaged lies. Ironically the only thing that’s different in 2020 is that we no longer believe those lies. Whereas I had no idea the magazine images I pored over as a teenager were retouched, young people are now wise to the point of cynicism about the airbrushing needed to create those images of false perfection – because they’re doing it too. So yes, the playing field is warped, but at least it’s level. The second is that it’s not up to advertisers or celebrities to instil ethics into our children. It’s our job as parents to constantly inject scepticism where it’s due – “Is the double chocolate sponge cake labelled ‘healthy’ really likely to be?”
We love to build up celebrities and tear them down, blaming them for greater societal ills. So Adele was under fire again yesterday for “cultural appropriation”, after posting an image of herself in a skimpy Jamaican flag-inspired outfit, on the day the Notting Hill Carnival was supposed to take place. I’d wager much of the criticism is only masking yet more hate directed at the onceobese singer for having lost weight. That weight loss isn’t doctored, and all the more irritating to her detractors for that. Because losing seven stone, for those of us without access to trainers, nutritionists or perhaps simply the motivation, is unachievable.
Forcing “perfect” public figures to “declare” their ruses may provide the small victory of making us feel better about ourselves, but it won’t avert the “psychological well-being disaster” Dr Evans is referring to. As anyone who has come into contact with youngsters suffering from low self-esteem or eating disorders will know, the reasons for those issues are far more complex.
Dr Evans is right about one thing, though: many young people’s psychological troubles are bound up in the sinister online world – a world the Government vowed to tackle with
“tough new measures” in 2019, when they unveiled the Online Harms White Paper that was supposed to make the UK “the safest place in the world to be online”. Drawn up amid a flurry of political action after the tragic story of 14-year-old Molly Russell, who killed herself after viewing online images of self-harm, the paper has now been delayed until 2024, after ministers were “unable to commit” to bringing the legislation into Parliament.
So perhaps before we address the inches digitally shaved off Kim Kardashian’s waist we should address the real online well-being disaster we have allowed to rage unchecked for years, out of fear of the tech giants. After all, the airbrushing of those crucial online protection proposals from the parliamentary calendar is far more dangerous than anything a frivolous app could achieve.