Should advertisers be required to disclose when they Photoshop a model? Should they be allowed to Photoshop at all?

As an amateur photographer who often uses Photoshop to “fix” some of my photos — and also as a young woman, formerly a girl and a teenager, who is all too familiar with the pressure to be beautiful — I found this New York Times article really really interesting: Lifting the Veil of Mere Pixel Perfection

Smoking, as it says in the warnings on cigarette packs, can kill. Alcoholic drinks, according to the footnotes in advertisements, are best enjoyed in moderation. Now some European lawmakers want to make people aware of another menace: Photoshop.

Concerned that girls and women feel excessive pressure to live up to the digitally botoxed and liposuctioned images of human perfection they see in glossy magazines, lawmakers in Britain and France are trying to get marketers to acknowledge the tweaking done to the photos. Under their proposals, ads containing altered photos of models would be required to carry disclaimers.

One specific proposition (that I could see myself being in favor of) is a “rating system” of sorts. Any retouched photo would be graded on a scale, say from 1 to 4 where 1 is retouched very little and 4 is retouched a lot, and then in fine print the changes would be disclosed. I think you can get the best of both worlds that way: a beautiful image, but also a clear message to girls that “perfection” like that isn’t real.

And why does it need to be? Kate Winslet? Is beautiful. She doesn’t need to shrink two sizes. Keira Knightley? Also beautiful. She doesn’t need a digital boob job.

All these images already have the advantage of professional lighting, makeup, wardrobe, and photography. And I don’t have any problem with that, but I can’t help wondering: why isn’t that enough?

That said, I am not really an advocate of banning Photoshop. That seems like a drastic and unnecessary step. Sometimes something happens to a photo (a bug flew in the way, for example) and you have to fix it. Totally understandable. Sometimes you just want erase a zit. Fine. But when you start shaving off pounds, erasing tattoos, etc., then I think you are entering dangerous territory. Possibly lying.

But that’s just my opinion, and an off-the-cuff one at that. What do y’all think?