If there was ever an example of just how poisoned and delusional the harmful world of women's lifestyle media is, surely this is it. Last month, Marie Claire, which has always had a knack of dressing up trash as credible infotainment, surveyed their readers and found that only a dismal 12 percent were "happy with their bodies". Of course, the irony of the women's lifestyle industry is that this is, far from an alarming figure, a comforting picture of the very anxiety that fuels sales. If women weren't happy with their bodies, sex lives and wardrobes, they... well.... wouldn't need to fork out money for cokehead hacks from Potts Point to tell them what they should be looking like. But Marie Claire cares - it wants Australian women to know that even though it's 200 plus pages of dribble are almost entirely devoted to aspirational material, whereby the ideal is offered as a solution to its readers' anxieties and doldrums - completely reaffirming every facet of the modern body-image crisis - we've really all missed the point, and it is simply trying to do its bit to help its female readers feel better about themselves. Today, it stated its case via a publicity stunt that is neither fresh nor meaningful, but rich in hypocrisy and calculation. It has begun a tiresome "debate" that will all end exactly where they want us to be - finding the image in question in our supermarkets and newsagencies, and putting our money in its pockets. Let's consider the many good reasons not to.

 

The issue of digital enhancement is an important one in today's media, as it's the most obvious example of technology enabling 21st century propaganda. Unlike political propaganda, its agenda is not to persuade or control social ideology, but to manipulate consumer behaviour; but it is, nonetheless, propaganda. It began, years ago, when models suddenly started to become perfected through the magic of photoshop - their skin tone evened, their blemishes gone, their stomachs trimmed - soon extending to popstars who are all a little more fetching (or younger) on their album covers than they are in real life. This clearly had a major impact on the cultural problem of body-image, for it raised the ideal even higher beyond the select beauties who were naturally ideal enough to comprise the modeling and entertainment industries - it was now crafting a kind of super-ideal that was utterly impossible to attain. Before too long, we arrived at a very dangerous point in our collective cultural consciousness: a population of modern women who have actually bought into the notion that this ideal is a "norm", when, in fact, it is a tiny minority - in the case of digital manipulation, not even an actual possibility, at all. This was a deliberate coup, happily engaged without one scrap of a social conscience, for commercial marketing and advertising, where the endless chase for the dangling carrot needs to be just that - endless. If we ever attain something that is suffice, we stop buying. Jump, little people, jump!

In the last few years, this has extended to appease the inherit sadism that has manifested within our modern celebrity obsession. When celebrities and models are used as aspirational figures (be it in advertising, or for magazines like Marie Claire), digital technology is used to perfect them. Quite logically, this eventually creates a resentment in the society that cannot attain such heights of perfection - something comforting, at least, in what it says about our innate nature and sensibility. It should be a good thing - and would be - if only we then responded to this correctly, by... say... rejecting the entire industry, altogether. Instead, that industry has cunningly created a co-existing mindset that is now also used by some of the very media that also capitalises on the perfect ideals: a sadistic thrill in seeing these celebrities and models fail - and we happily indulge this, still consuming these very channels, instead of rejecting the channels through which the distorted and dangerous ideals are facilitated. And photoshop has also come in rather handy for the crucifixion, too. Five minutes on photoshop and Britney Spears' pupils can be dilated and drugged, Madonna's arms can give the wicked witch of the west a run for her money, and Posh Beckham can have legs as thin as your index finger. "Oh my God - look how ugly she really is!" we scoff, hoping to feel better about our own insecurities that have been triggered on the page preceding that one. These images are used for mindless quick fixes of sadism that give us a kick in the checkout line or tearoom. But just like the perfected variety, they are not real - it is simply a state where technology has meant that what editors and brand managers would always have liked to do, if only reality would allow them, is now possible. Kaching.

This has brought about the issue of digital enhancement as a question for government, in their role as cultural overseers, to address. Thankfully, our current government has done just that. Many of Rudd's cultural ethics manoeuvrings have enraged thousands; but whatever you think of the controversial net filtering plans, Labor's efforts to slap the media into shape should, on the whole, be applauded - particularly, their proposal to force publishers and editors to clearly state where a photograph has been digitally manipulated. This has already been used in the case of advertorials, and, sadly, I'd say to little affect; but, unlike advertorials, this one is already a hot topic socially, and will surely make its mark (literally) on the way we consume and interpret the images that are forced down our throats by the people who make money off us.

Just as it was the same industries that eventually used digital enhancement to offer thrills of our resentments as it was that triggered these resentments in the first place, there has already been a move to capitalise on this social topic from within the very industries causing it. Truth be told, the growing awareness of the body-image crisis is frightening editors like Jackie Frank, because it (rightly) points the finger firmly at the decision-makers of the beauty industries, like herself. But, ingeniously, the response has been to create material that still co-exists with all the pages of guilty aspirational imagery, media and (what it nearly all boils down to, at the end of the day) advertising, but that not only tries to wipe its hands clean (see them doing their bit!? They're not like the others, heavens no!), but that actually uses the growing public consciousness as a PR mechanism to place their latest stunt into press and (therefore) into the minds and, ultimately, pockets of consumers. This is exactly what Marie Claire did this week.

In days of old, a figure such as the atrocious 12% that has now become the supposed catalyst for this stunt (which is, in itself, unlikely - it's just a great story in the PR manufacturing of this - if anything, the idea for the shoot would have preceded the survey) would never have been flaunted. But they create the spine, playing into the social topic du jour, on the traditional journalistic terms we generally know them through - the mighty social survey. Hence, Marie Claire themselves present the dilemma, complete with findings, and then - you go girls - set about in doing something to "solve" them.

Next, bring in the most staple emotive disclaimer there is: the charity stunt. I mean, how could anyone suggest they're doing harm to this debate, when they're doing it all for charity?! It's not to sell their magazine, heavens no - it's for the poor girls, I tell you!! Because all this, let us not forget - they sure wont - is "for"... wait for it... The Butterfly Foundation, which is... yes... a charity organisation for young girls with eating disorders. A charity stunt for eating disorders featuring the ideal - perfectly thin - Aussie supermodel, whose entire career is off the back of being firstly a footy cheerleader and then, secondly, Miss Universe?! Jackie Frank, you are truly vile. The parents of girls with eating disorders, the nation over, should lynch you in a slow and painful manner. And they should run pictures of it in New Idea for us to laugh at, waiting for our turn in the checkout lines. And who the hell is running the PR at The Butterfly Organisation? Sure, these organisations are desperate enough after a year of an uncharitable recession, but some consideration in their opportunities wouldn't go astray. Did anyone at the organisation have the common sense to say, "Um, guys, I think this isn't such a good idea"? before it was rolled out?

Well, if they did, nobody listened - which, considering the size of a deal with the likes of Marie Claire, I suppose isn't too surprising (certainly, nobody is going to be allowed to break from the deal now, the organisation will be forced to support its unfortunate decision). Out went the press releases and calls for interviews to help promote the stunt - sorry, I mean, important social issue. These featured some truly mesmorising bytes of sheer absurdity, as Hawkins (or the copywriters pretending to be her) desperately tried to convince us that her untouched image is a cultural revolution. "I'm not a stick figure," she assures us. "I thought it would be great to tell women to be themselves and be more confident." Thanks, Jen.

And what does this ideal-shattering image all come down to in the untouched revelation stakes? Just in case any of us had difficulty finding it, Frank pointed it out: the "crease in her tummy". Go on, have a look at the image again. Have a look at poor, fat Jennifer Hawkins, and do note the crease in her stomach, just to the right of her hand. I'd suggest it's because she's twisting and, well, even the skin of a stick figure tends to, you know, move. But I wouldn't want to spoil the revolution and douse the psychological shift that seeing this image will surely have for Australian women.  Never mind her perfect makeup, perfect skin - hello, people, perfect figure - they could have photoshopped that crease out, and yet - glory be to Marie Claire - they didn't.

By lunchtime, the detractors had surfaced. Yes, many of them are questionable, because they are, at the end of the day, mostly representatives of - what a surprise - Marie Claire's competing magazines. They know how to spot a press opportunity too, after all - they're just not as clever as Frank at making their own, so they're left to ride others'. In the end, that's the tragedy of the media industries, and the problem with the propagandist culture it has well and truly become - because, when it's all said and done, everyone has a buck to make, and nothing that gets airtime or print coverage is motivated by much else, or given for much else. Still, comedienne Bianca Dye - who, whilst still having benefits to make from any publicity, is at least more removed from the transparent squabble of magazine editors - has come out, guns blazing, against Hawkins' shoot.

Dye featured in Madison Magazine's own attempt to capitalise on the social issue, last November, when it ran a nude shoot of her size 14 body. Dye fails to mention one obvious difference that does not exactly absolve Madison from the culture both it and Marie Claire are a part of and perpetuate - unlike the more ideal Hawkins, Dye was not used as the cover image for the issue (that was given to a thin supermodel) - but, regardless, her comments begin to offer some sense in the middle of very little sense at all.  "Yes, she (Hawkins) is lovely, but does that make her a poster girl for a positive body image?" she asks. "It's just not right. She was born beautiful. She has never had to go through any stress to look like that. Jackie Frank is one of the most respected editors in the country, and I am in shock that they would say Jennifer Hawkins is a natural role model. It's like we've taken 20 steps backwards."

Here, she makes an important distinction that needs to be made, when understanding the connection between these images and the body-image crisis (leading to problems such as eating disorders). I personally have no problem with Jennifer Hawkins being used by magazines - there has to be some point where neither are we discriminating against people who were born closer to the ideal. The difference here is the context of the stunt - placing her as a role model and, furthermore, as some kind of saviour to women facing a body-image problem (88 percent of their readers, if their survey is accurate). The front cover alludes to it instantly - "The Naked Truth - Jennifer Bares All For Charity", and everything therein is about Jennifer's image tackling this issue. The major dynamic in the body-image problem is the distortion of perception that occurs when a culture industry presents a repeated image that becomes absorbed as a truth or seen as "natural". The truth is that most women do not look like Jennifer Hawkins; but in thinking this image is more attainable and part of our reality than it is, an anxiety is created that really shouldn't be there. The result is a dissonance between reality and pop culture fantasy that is literally killing young women across our country. The message is "You should look like this" - more to the point, magazines such as Marie Claire offer the misleading notion that women actually "can" - which creates the crisis that can only be resolved with the message "It is okay not to look like this." Hawkins, as Dye rightly points out, is by no means indicative, and, therefore, as Toowoomba editor Liz Hamilton noted, the image "does more harm than good" when placed in the context of the message it has the audacity to think it is giving to Australian women.

We are going to see more of it in future, too. As it is, Frank has not created a fresh gem here, but simply a formidable extension on this kind of stunt, already tried by Woman's Weekly (who used an untouched Sarah Murdoch to obliterate the ageing myth) and the likes of Madison (who used Dye). As the topic of digital manipulation continues to heat up, fashion and women's lifestyle editors like Frank will find more ways to using it to their own advantage. Our advantage will come when the government finally passes its new regulations and makes them clearly state what images in the magazine are touched (the 300 others, no less, that fill the current Marie Claire issue, beyond Hawkins).

Until then, ignore the competition between these magazines that will erupt - each coming out to claim that they are the most socially conscious, the most in touch, the most honest. Bla, bla, blaaaaaaaaa. Even Dye, for all the good in her sentiment, was herself caught out. She wants to put herself, and Madison, forward over Hawkins and Marie Claire, as a positive image for women being comfortable with their bodies. But she was then forced to admit she uses Botox. Oh, Bianca.

 

If you want to know you're clear of the evil clutches of that industry, you're best leaving those pages well and truly on the shelves, and looking in a mirror - or maybe just the streets around you - instead.