Show support for Live Life Unfiltered's #ShowMeUnfiltered Campaign: 

Our goal is to see the world a lot less filtered and to hold advertisers accountable for using edited content to sell their products and services. The #ShowMeUnfiltered campaign includes a series of initiatives to encourage people to find ways to relate, instead of compare. We want to challenge people to stand up for changing the way things are and normalize realness!

The Objective:

Any models appearing in commercial photography or videography whose bodies have been modified to look thinner or thicker by editing software must be accompanied by a notice that the image or video has been retouched.

The Reasoning:

We must stop subjecting impressionable children and teenagers to advertising that includes models whose bodies have been manipulated with editing software. These tools are being used irresponsibly to motivate consumerism by creating impossible standards to live up to. Advertisers procure low self-esteem and develop insecurities amongst people, particularly women, to provide costly solutions and fuel an already multi-billion-dollar industry.

According to the Dove Self Esteem Project, there is a direct correlation between the development of low self-esteem, negative body image, and media consumption. Numerous studies illustrate how disproportionately young girls are negatively affected by advertising which becomes a factor in the development of eating disorders. The more unhappy someone is with their body image, the greater the likelihood of suffering from disordered eating.

With anorexia being the leading cause of death of any mental illness, we must take steps to address this issue. Just look at the increase in child eating disorder related hospitalizations that there have been in Canada since the pandemic due to increased media usage. Are eating disorders caused solely by advertisers editing bodies? No, but they do play a role in precipitating them and preventing children from being resilient against the pressure to be “perfect.” In fact, the media is one of the main ways children learn about beauty ideals and stereotypes.

According to Dr. Jean Kilbourne, a mere 5% of North American women possess the body type portrayed in the media. When you allow body editing, that number is 0% because it produces images that aren’t real or even close to being attainable. Author, Naomi Wolf, identified that models in the media have continued to get thinner over the years and image manipulation only exacerbates that fact.

If what companies advertised worked, then they wouldn’t need the fabricated propaganda. Just like how if diets worked, a person wouldn’t have to go on one more than once, edited bodies are falsehoods with potentially damaging outcomes.

Our bodies are not commodities. They are not things to be slimmed, embellished, liquified, shaped, or disappeared. These tools aren’t creating art; they are creating self-hatred.

This is not about stifling creativity, removing background distractions, playing with colour, or adding artistic elements; it’s about being a responsible advertiser. Editing disclaimers are not anti-editing; instead, it is anti-manipulating bodies to be thinner or thicker. What need is there to ever do this to someone’s body? There is no logical or artistic explanation. There is no reasoning other than circulating a beauty ideal that recklessly influences social behaviour.

The Canadian government, concerned for the health of their people, has mandated nutritional guidelines on foods and warning labels on cigarettes. It is not asking too much to do the same with commercially edited bodies. We need to start taking steps to combat negative body image, eating disorders, and other interrelated issues—these issues that can begin as young as age 3.

We have a social responsibility to ensure that, at the very least, everyone can tell when images have been thinned or thickened. Media consumers need to know that what they are looking at is not REAL, and advertisers need to understand where the lines are.