Troian Bellisario has a message for advertisers about photoshopping. As someone who has spoken publicly about struggling with her body image and an eating disorder, Bellisario believes that photoshopped images contribute to the issue.
The actress shared a video about a law in France which requires models to get a doctor's note confirming they are at a healthy weight. It also necessitates that photoshopped images be labeled as such.
While Bellisario addressed wanting to avoid shaming naturally thin people with the first part of the French law, she wholeheartedly agrees with the second half. "We in America should have MANDITORY [sic] WARNINGS on images in advertisements & PRESS that have been doctored," she writes in her Instagram 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. 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."
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Bellisario continued in her post saying that she believes that some products are sold on the basis of comparison with these heavily altered images with the idea that we "need to buy this product to be like the person in the ad. And feel better about ourselves."
Other celebrities have expressed a similar stance on photoshopping. Earlier this year, model Emily Ratajkowski called out fashion magazine Madame Figaro for unrealistically altering an image of her for their cover. Lena Dunham thanked Glamour for leaving their cover shot of her and the cast of Girls unretouched.
Many studies have been conducted on this subject. According to research published in the New Media & Society journal, spending even as much as 30 minutes looking at fitness influencers and models on Instagram can have a negative effect on a person's self-esteem. Another study published just earlier this year found that people who looked at photos of thin models had a smaller perception of what an ideal body looked like than those who looked at plus-size models.
Bellisario ended her post by describing a world she hopes could be possible writing, "What an amazing world it would be if we could just acknowledge that. And then celebrate that we all look different, have different bodies and different backgrounds and histories, and then find all of those differences beautiful."
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