MANILA — The days of advertisements showing off impossibly good-looking models could be numbered.
Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago has recently proposed Senate Bill 2657 which seeks to limit the use of image alteration in advertising in a bid to protect consumers from products with tall claims.
While editing images to enhance a model’s appearance is common practice especially in the beauty and cosmetics industry, Santiago said that it is a“clear deception on the part of advertisers” as it can give unrealistic expectations on how a product should deliver.
Worse, a growing number of research said that exposure to such altered images have been linked to emotional, mental, and physical health issues like eating disorders, she adds.
Especially at risk are children and teenagers who are impressionable and exposed to such imagery more often via teen-oriented publications, outdoor media and online.
“The dissemination of unrealistic body standards has been linked to eating disorders among men and women of varying age groups, but it has a particularly destructive health effect on children and teenagers,” Santiago mentioned in the bill, dubbed the “Anti-Deceptive Advertising Report Act.”
If passed, the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) will be tasked to submit a report to Congress about not just on how to minimize the excessive use of photo manipulation in ads but also recommendations for an “appropriate, risk-based regulatory framework.”
Currently, the Philippine advertising industry is self-regulated led by the Ads Standards Council (ASC), a non-profit that encourages the resolution of advertising issues and concerns by the practitioners themselves.
The ASC is the advertising industry body in-charge of screening and regulating content of advertising materials across all medium, “primarily concerned with advertising content and its implications, not on intent, in reviewing the merits of a material or case.”
