Influencers back ‘warning’ label for airbrushed social media snaps

New regulations in Norway spark conversation regarding having to declare manipulated photos on social media  

Before and after: the Kardashian matriarch and celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay get ‘facetuned’ to hide their beautiful wrinkles
Before and after: the Kardashian matriarch and celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay get ‘facetuned’ to hide their beautiful wrinkles

Do you Facetune your photos? In Norway, you now have to declare when using the photo manipulation app that allows you to make your nose look smaller, whiten your teeth, and enhance your cheekbones.

It can be hard to tell which photos on social media have been edited to produce picture-perfect results that cancel out all blemishes.

But legislators in Norway have passed new regulations requiring social media influencers and advertisers, to label retouched photos and fight unrealistic beauty standards.

The new regulations were passed as an amendment to the nation’s Marketing Act, and now mandate a standardised label designed by the ministry for children and family affairs for ads where a body’s shape, size or skin has been retouched, even with an app filter like Facetune.

Examples include enlarged lips, a narrowed waist, and exaggerated muscles, but it’s not clear if the same will apply to adjustments of lighting or saturation. Still, violations are punishable with escalating fines, and in extreme cases, even imprisonment.

The move comes amidst continued public debate in Norway surrounding “kroppspress”, the word used to explain “body pressure” or “beauty standards” and if these contributed to low self-esteem in young people.

But would a disclaimer on what is being filtered improve people’s self-esteem?

The model Madeleine Baldacchino has amassed over 139,000 followers on Instagram, and she is in favour of the law, saying she thinks it would be great to implement it locally.

“I’m very anti photo manipulation,” Baldacchino says, who adds that in modelling, bodies are often manipulated against models’ will. “My experience as a model as well as an occasional content creator, where we don’t have control over the photos of us being published, is that this can have serious consequences on models’ own body image.”

Baldacchino says influencers give a false representation of what they look like online when manipulating their image, causing their younger audiences to be “easily manipulated and insecure.”

 Only natural: models Madeleine Baldacchino and Emily Jones back the Norwegian labelling for airbrushed snaps on social media
Only natural: models Madeleine Baldacchino and Emily Jones back the Norwegian labelling for airbrushed snaps on social media

Another supporter of the Norwegian law is the plus-size influencer Emily Jones, who with over 200,000 followers, has been determined not to alter her images to promote a natural look. “I’m 31 and even I find myself getting self-conscious when I scroll through my phone, so I can’t imagine what it’s like for young people,” Jones said.

She takes the example of the Kardashians, who alter every photo and don’t let anything be posted unless their team approves it. “Not even the most beautiful people in the world really look like what they’re presenting online,” Jones says. “People having to declare if they’ve altered their photos could only be a good thing and might promote a more natural look.”

The co-founder of online feminist community Għajjejt u Xbajt, Sofia Mifsud, sees apps like FaceTune altering the lines between make-believe and creating an entirely false image around oneself.

“With Photoshop coming into play years ago, I think this was only a natural progression of things, particularly with the ability to have more and more editing tools in the palm of your hand. I think the most harmful altered images for youths on social media are those that are being created to sell a false facade and lifestyle,” Mifsud said.

Mifsud said she was in favour of introducing a similar law. “I think if you are editing your images for fun, then you have absolutely nothing to hide, and people should not be looking to sell a fake image to impressionable young people, particularly when it comes to their looks. I think it will help.

“I grew up modelling and being altered by photographers constantly, and it really warped the way I even saw myself,” she said.

Mifsud said that informing an audience that one has edited their body and image lends itself to accountability and allows one to reflect on what they are communicating subconsciously to their audience. “Just like in many places influencers now have to declare that they are selling products or conducting an ad on social media, the same should apply to using editing tools,” she said.