anorexia

No more Photoshopping models without disclosure -- in Israel

A law passed late Monday in Israel is not only banning underweight models from appearing in local advertising, it's also requiring publications to disclose when models -- male or female -- have been digitally edited to appear thinner than they are.

"We want to break the illusion that the model we see is real," Liad Gil-Har, the assistant to the law sponsor, told the Associated Press.

Supporters of the law, which appears to be the first of its kind anywhere, say they hope it will help reduce the rate of eating disorders, which in many developed countries (… Read more

Tumblr tackles pro-anorexia and suicide blogs

A quick search on Tumblr looking for tags related to eating disorders can launch a user into a world of self-harm blogs with posts like "keep calm and stop eating," "mind over matter and I won't get fatter," and "my life changed forever when I choose not to eat."

However, as of next week, most likely none of these posts will show up on the microblogging service.

Tumblr announced today that it was planning to implement a new policy banning pro-self-harm blogs. In addition, it will show public service warnings when people search … Read more

Ralph Lauren admits it needs Photoshop lessons

I've never seen Ralph Lauren in real life, but when he appeared on "Friends" a few years ago, he looked somewhat diminutive and not entirely in the first bloom of slenderness.

So I wonder what he might have thought when a recently produced Ralph Lauren ad seemed to feature a model who last ate in 2004 and clearly enjoyed the attention of a plastic surgeon whose diet consisted entirely of mushrooms from the magic department of his local supermarket.

Those assiduously nourished people at Photoshop Disasters were rather taken with this image, in the way one might … Read more

Should pro-anorexia sites be banned?

Perhaps no one should be surprised that there are Web sites that appear to encourage those who have anorexia and bulimia and even give supposedly helpful tips on how to pursue those conditions.

Now the U.K.'s Royal College of Psychiatrists has called for urgent governmental action to halt the proliferation of such sites.

"Pro-ana and pro-mia websites advocate anorexia nervosa or bulimia nervosa as a lifestyle choice, rather than as serious mental disorders," said professor Ulrike Schmidt, chair of the college's eating disorders section. "Research shows that, even for healthy young women, viewing such … Read more

Is your cell phone skinny enough for virtual model avatars?

If you're an "America's Next Top Model" watcher who can't get enough of the CW network reality show, you might be interested in this. Thanks to a new tie-in, you can play your own version of the game on your cell phone. It's a product of CBS Interactive, the new-media wing of CW co-parent CBS; and Hong Kong-based avatar and mobile-game company Artificial Life--yes, the creator of the V-Girl cell phone girlfriends. (Artificial Life also created the far awesomer V-Penguins.)

But the "ANTM" collaboration doesn't seem to be a virtual-girlfriend … Read more

The world's thinnest mobile LCD

In the cruelly fickle and anorexic world of handheld devices, 0.07 millimeters can be the difference between love and rejection. So for the moment, at least, the Thinner Than Thou Award apparently belongs to Samsung, which has developed an LCD no thicker than a credit card at 0.82 millimeters.

Newlaunches says the new 240- by 320-pixel screen, which is scheduled for mass production in the second half of 2007, obliterates the previous record by a whopping 0.07 millimeters. At this size, every fraction counts: Even the screen's surface measurement comes in two sizes, of 2.1- … Read more

Samsung's PC is mini all right, but why?

A few years ago, we purchased a Sony "Slimtop" PC--and it wasn't even the tablet model, so please don't ask us why. (We were trying to lose weight at the time, so maybe it was some twisted form of projection. Enough about that.)

A new Samsung mini-PC, by comparison, makes the Slimtop seem morbidly obese. The MX10 measures a scant 10.4 by 11.8 inches and, other than its thickness of slightly more than 2 inches, is smaller than a lot of laptops on the market (sans screen, of course). Akihabara News says it includes … Read more