Troian Bellisario Wants Labels on All Photoshopped Images
PHOTO: Ray Tamarra/GC Images
In a call for more transparency in advertising, Pretty Little Liars star Troian Bellisario is urging brands to label images that they Photoshop—a move that she believes will help girls and women who suffer from body image and eating disorders, just as she once did, and shift potentially harmful cultural standards of beauty.
On Saturday, she posted an Instagram highlighting a viral ATTN: video about a new law in France that requires images to be labeled if they’ve been airbrushed or Photoshopped to make models look thinner—and her clear support for this provision.
“We in America should have MANDATORY WARNINGS on images in advertisements and PRESS that have been doctored,” she captioned her post. “Because the real issue (in my opinion) is that we are selling products (clothes, perfume, music, film) on unrealistic and doctored images of people.”
She continued, saying: “And I for one would want to know, I would want my friends to know and strangers and especially young men and women to know if they were looking at something real or something fake. Because then we can see clearly that we are being sold products on the basis of first making ourselves feel less than (not pretty enough, not skinny enough, not healthy enough, whatever) so we ‘need to buy this product to be like the person in the ad. And feel better about ourselves.’ Well, guess what? The person in the ad doesn’t even look like that.”
(There’s a second part to France’s law, too—one that she’s not as much of a fan of. That’s the bit requiring models to have a doctor’s note saying they’re healthy enough to work. Bellisario says she doesn’t want to body-shame naturally thin women, “nor do I want to dictate whether or not they should work based on weight or whether or not they have a mental illness (ED).”)
Regarding the Photoshop labels, she thinks that highlighting the effect of Photoshop on models’ bodies could be a necessary and beneficial reminder to everyone that the ideals reflected in advertisements are constructs—not an actual reflection of what we must look like in order to be beautiful. “What an amazing world it would be if we could just acknowledge that,” she captioned her ‘gram. “And then celebrate that we all look different, have different bodies and different backgrounds and histories, and then find all of those differences beautiful. Happy Saturday.”
Related Stories:
–Troian Bellisario on Her Life After Anorexia: ‘This Is Me After 10 Years of Recovery’
–Troian Bellisario Reveals How Her Eating Disorder Influenced Her New Film ‘Feed’