© PNASActress Kim Cattrall after digital retouching.
Intuitively, we know the images we see of celebrities and models are too beautiful to be true. And now two researchers are proposing a system intended to offer a reality check for images photoshopped to super-human perfection.
"Impossibly thin, tall, and
wrinkle- and blemish-free models are routinely splashed onto billboards, advertisements and magazine covers," write researchers Hany Farid, a professor of computer science and Eric Kee, a doctoral student, both of Dartmouth College, in an article published today (Nov. 28) in the journal
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "The ubiquity of these unrealistic and highly idealized images has been linked to eating disorders and body-image dissatisfaction in men, women, and children.
They aren't alone. Earlier this year, for example, the American Medical Association (AMA) adopted a policy intended to discourage the
alteration of photos in ways that could "promote unrealistic expectations of appropriate body image." Research has linked exposure to unrealistic body images to
eating disorders and other child- and adolescent-health problems, according to the AMA.
Hany and Kee think viewers should know how much an image has been altered.