A rose by any other name ...

So, all that glistens is not gold, apparently. It would appear that, for some time now, the advertising industry has been ‘air-brushing’ photos of model’s faces to make us like/envy them more. At a guess, I’d say this practice has been going on since, oh, I don’t really know, but let’s say from 1839 onwards – after the first daguerreotype photograph of a person was taken in France. Whether attempts to have a sort of kite-mark system to indicate the degree of digital manipulation will succeed (rather like the Footage Shown Does Not Represent Actual Game Play from adverts for consol games), I doubt much progress will be made until after the tabloids are forced to stop printing pictures of young women with their ‘tits out for the lads.’ That campaign never seems to gain much traction (you’d think it was male-dominated world and equality an illusion, wouldn’t you?), so persuading women to vote with their purses and say, have a temporary, week-long, embargo on buying magazines until such publications stop/reduce displaying idealised versions of femininity, seems a bit of a pipe dream on my part. With young women killing themselves by shoving silicon into their bottoms in an effort to ‘look good’ (Claudia Seye Aderotimi); with anecdotal evidence that some believe they have to replicate on-line porn to ‘fit in’; and with the safety net of Botox for when they get over twenty-three, I suspect the rose-coloured tint of advertising aimed at them will be here for some time. Unfortunately.

Oh, there’s also been a revolution in Egypt, this week …