@Alix’s huge rant.
First up please don’t put words in my mouth, it’s rude. I’m not against ‘your group’ nor even ‘you’ I’m vaguely in favor of a Policy which you’re disagreeing with. Nice of you to make it personal an all, I mean gosh, I don’t even warrant capitalization and spacing in my name now? I think I might break down here. <>

Since it is clearly a pointless discussion if I’m not even reading your posts I’ll re-phrase the anti-arguments so you can correct me if I’m way off the mark or missing some aspect of your position.

1) You do not think legislation curtailing the freedom of corporations is effective because governments are slow and plodding and corporations are not (see tax codes), thus the policy will have no effect as the nimble companies will dodge it.
2) You do not like banning things because it is inherently illiberal & curbing peoples liberty is not what we’re about.
3) Whilst you dislike the ‘shopping of images as much as anyone. You are of the view that you got over your insecurities thanks to intelligence and education and they can do the same.
4) In order to facilitate this you would like to modify the behavior of businesses and those who manipulate photos for them through some voluntary market based ‘financial incentive’ also lobbying.
5) You do not think that the policy will sufficiently reduce the number or severity of the offending manipulated images.
6) You do not think it is ever really a good idea for the Lib Dem party to ban things because it generates bad PR.

Did I miss any? Assuming not, my ‘strawman’ is a refutation of (2) this was because I believed I had already refuted (4) and (3) is merely an argument for other action rather than a good reason to avoid this action. I have to admit I did not realize you were trying to argue (1), (5) & (6) prior to the huge rant, my bad.

Lets try again!

3) I totally agree with you, in an ideal world we would see everyone educated such that these images did not move them. Cultural change to make these adverts unacceptable to the advertisers and consumers would prevent them ever being made far more effectively than regulation.
Other parts of the paper tried to address this directly, but, it in no way precludes the use of regulation to attack the problem from both sides and so more quickly change the socially accepted norms. If advertisers are forced to consider the legality of their adverts directed at children whilst they’re being educated upon the evils they’re undertaking I think the culture will change faster.
The supporting evidence from this come from the smoking ban, much as I disagree with it I can’t argue that it has changed the behavior of people far faster than simply trying to educate them. I suspect that now no one is smoking in pubs the cultural norms will change faster and we can repeal the ban.

1) Whilst governments are slow and plodding there are examples of similar legislation which the companies have failed to avoid. Tax laws are hideously complex and administered by the book. This policy is very simple and the ASA has more flexibility in applying the rules. 37 years ago health warnings were introduced on cigarette packets, in all that time have the cigarette companies managed to dodge the regulation? No, in fact, in all that time the warnings have become more pronounced.

2) Yes this policy is illiberal in that it reduces freedom. BUT, it only applies to a very narrow set of people in a commercial setting. This is not a reduction in ‘free speech’ because adverts are not speech, it is not even a limit on communication except when directed at children (outside of that you can still ‘say’ anything provided you explain that you’re ‘lying’).
Hence “I really don’t understand why you guys are coming down so much in favor on the rights and freedoms of business to mislead and manipulate”.
Given the VAST numbers of people in the anti crowd who’s main argument is ‘banning stuff is illiberal’ this is not a strawman. The refutation is “I’m in favor of liberty for everyone where it doesn’t impinge on other peoples” not ranty ad-hom’s. I presume you resort to ranty ad-homs because it’s obvious this DOES impinge on other peoples liberty.

4) Here’s were we get to the youtube links and your failing to read my arguments whilst complaining I do the same.
The crux of your argument for alternative action rests upon the ability of lobbying to achieve the same reduction in negative ads being run. The relevance of the two adverts is this:
* Dove have for some time run an ad campaign focused on “Real Women”.
* As a result Dove will have far more data on the effectiveness of this campaign
* However, Dove is really just a brand of Uniliever,
* Unilever have not rolled the “Real Women” campaign out to their other brands.

Thus, the people with the most information to know if it’s a good idea are of the view that their cosmetic products will not be well served by a “Real Women” advertising campaign. IF I were to follow your suggestion and go to a cosmetics company and say:
“Hi, look at how successful Doves ‘Real Women’ campaign is, shouldn’t you copy it?”
D’ya think they might not notice that the company who’s running the campaign hasn’t rolled it out for their own cosmetic products?

5) This is quite hard to disprove because we’re in the realms of psychology, however you seem to be of the prevailing western view that people take on concepts through rational thought. The girls computer like brain will see a single photoshopped images on the mags cover (not a advert) and BAM! suddenly she instantly assimilates the concept that this is normal beauty and she must conform to this.
We’re kinda outside the scope of a LibDem voice comment here but persuasion & advertising doesn’t work like this (pity, we could get away with a single focus delivery per voter). Basically with a huge amount of repetition & likely with little conscious thought the concepts of ‘normal beauty’ will move. Yes, the policy would not prevent all girls from having self esteem issues. But, it doesn’t really curtail much in the way of liberty & it could well have a positive impact as well as helping change culturally accepted norms. I mean most images in a girls mag are going to be photoshopped and probably at most half will be adverts, so it’s not like anyone is expecting this to be a panacea but it will probably help and any kind of panacea would involve actually curtailing freedom of artistic (rather than commercial) expression.

6) Couldn’t agree more, in my opinion the clause should’ve simply regulated for the advisory rather than the ban. Not only is this better PR wise there would still be vast numbers of ‘shopped images viewed by the poor kiddies so giving them the information to say ‘thats fake’ is more plausible than protecting them.
Sadly your rabid anti-regulation friends decided that they’d remove any kind of legislation for photoshopping so the option was ‘vote for sweet FA or vote for a ban’.

Incidentally I can’t find a more authoritative source than wikipedia but EU regulations on children’s TV advertising coming into effect end of 2009 apparently ban adverts which aim to exploit children’s naivety so looks like something similar may become law fairly soon anyway.

On the other point, I don’t think you should be so dismissive of policies that are partial solutions to problems. Think of anti-crime policies for example. There isn’t one magic wand the cures crime on its own, so the only policies it’s possible to have are ones that offer partial solutions.

“it may well be in part (given I know several of the speakers are regular blog readers) a reflection of how frequently when such issues come up on blogs they are followed by a series of comments, almost always from men, along the lines of “don’t be silly, pull yourself together, there’s no problem here”.”

If it is as you suspect, maybe the speakers in question should try to tell the difference in future between a legislative forum and having a rant in the pub, because this is something I tend to require of legislators. This is why we think Dan Hannan is basically an idiot, remember?

“but the general tone was one of “this isn’t going to solve the problem on its own, but it will help”.”

So we ARE getting shitty headlines for very little reason then!

Guess I must have missed a press release.

(I’ve also updated the post to add a link to Lynne’s speech at the end of the debate which Alex Folkes filmed.)

Mark, by your account, those who spoke in the debate seem to have spent a lot of time emotionally exploring their version of the problem and no time at all defending this particular measure as an actual solution. If they can’t tell me (a) exactly what the problem is they want to solve and (b) why this particular measure will solve it then we’re in sending-message territory, whether you like it or not. Joe Otten’s blog post reinforces you – he says that one speaker after another got up and talked about how terrible body fascism was, as if there was a risk people might not realise that, if that was the point at issue rather than whether this was the right thing to do about it. However, the only first hand experience of opinions I have on this are in the comments on this article and on Bernard’s piece yesterday – where what I say still stands. Many of those who defended it did so because of “women power corporations anorexia horrible equality pressure media” [rearrange words and insert verbs as you wish].

What I want is “this problem exists in the media, we have figures that show it results in X number of eating disorder cases and mental health problems which would not otherwise have arisen, the problem can be ring-fenced and eliminated by means of this measure.” Otherwise it’s just what I said – message-sending. And of course, no-one could come up with the chain of causality I’ve just suggest, because the problem is just so much more complicated than that (and I do hope someone responds to the only person on this thread with actual first-hand experience of mental health work).

Ollie Cromwell says: “Equipping people with the skills to exist in the real word does, but protecting them from it does not.” This is precisely the correct attitude to take. I have no truck with the exploitative attitudes of the industries with vested interests in objectifying women. But I don’t think censorship is the most productive way to go about it. I don’t doubt that our party is genuine in wanting to do something positive on this issue, but what we’ve opted for would be hopelessly ineffective. I can’t see that banning a bit of airbrushing would make much difference to the kind of work that I do.

On the other hand, if conference had discussed how to find solutions to some of the complex mental health and social problems facing our young people, we might have come up with something more responsible, and almost certainly more relevant. Viewing the enormous complexities of adolescent psychiatric health through the narrow prism of “Real Women” was never likely to produce any genuinely productive actions.

Measures to encourage equality are a good thing. Forcing yourself to believe otherwise because you want to make sure you’re ticking the box marked “Liberal” is not.

Leaving aside the assumption that the policy might actually work (which isn’t 100% certain anyway), since when did we ignore whether something is “liberal” or not? Isn’t it, y’know, in the name and all that? Nobody ever said being liberal had to be easy. In fact, doing things in a way that preserves maximum liberty is often very hard. But it’s worth doing it that way because, in the long run, it’s the right way of doing things. A ban on a certain kind of advertising is just “message” politics, to show that we “care” about an issue (and we certainly do care!), but it won’t achieve anything to solve the underlying problem.

Liberalism is all about creating a society where people are free to read and view and absorb whatever media they like (free speech) and are also secure and confident enough in their own individual identity to be unaffected by negative things that they might read or hear. This proposal basically assumes that we will never get to that situation and that we will always need to protect women from pictures of other women who look, in some sense, more attractive than they are. Is that really what we want? Instead of confronting the underlying problem, we just ban a few symptoms and hope everyone applauds us for doing it. Meanwhile, the justification for censorship that someone might be upset by reading or seeing something in print has now been given further credence by a party that is supposed to be, broadly, against that kind of thing. Maybe you think that the benefits of this policy outweigh the costs, but I simply don’t.

Sadly, I suspect this is exactly what people mean when they suggest we aren’t ready for government. Can we not just, for five minutes, think about everything as if we might actually be in a position to bloody enact it? Ironically, this is exactly what Clegg is doing with his big scary tuition fees announcement.

This is so poorly thought through, what happens when all these girls go on holiday and see European Magazines or American ones, are they suddenly going to start starving themselves? Perhaps they will just think they come from the ugly country and women the world over look better. It is just ridiculous. We live in a Global Village, oh hang on, I have got it, we need to ban foreign TV and foreign magazines too. That’ll do it.

*Am I allowed to make a joke about that?

@Millian Well said.

From your post: “They know the difference between reality and Barbie even if some Liberal Democrat’s have lost their grip on it”

*Frown* How many Liberal Democrats is that?

I think you’re wrong here in any case. Actually, there is a blurred line between reality and Barbie for some girls. The point is that the right answer is to teach them about that line rather than banning Barbie.

“I really don’t understand why you guys are coming down so much in favor on the rights and freedoms of business to mislead and manipulate.”

Loving that straw man there. “You’re against us so you must be in favour of the nasty big businesses.”

Your lack of understanding is due to the fact that you keep insistently not listening to what I’m saying.

(A) I don’t think any of you know what you actually want to achieve here, and my opinion has only been reinforced by reading comments in favour of the policy. I’ve read everything from a comparatively restrained “want to stop children accessing unrealistic aspirations before they’re ready” to “want to redress balance of power between men and women and free women from shackles of evil corporations”. That’s a pretty hefty spread of aims for what I keep being assured is a tiny piece of power-extension for the ASA.

You’re also deeply confused about the meaning of “unrealistic aspiration”. It’s clearly unrealistic for women (or anyone) to aspire to look like someone in a photoshopped image. But it’s also unrealistic for women (or anyone) to aspire to look like a beautiful model professionally posed in a non-photoshopped image. In the case of many of the big design house advertisements, it’s unrealistic for the vast majority of women to even afford the clothes and make-up they’re wearing. The whole fucking thing is bonkersly unrealistic. And you think getting excited about a small percentage of the whole process comes anywhere near addressing that?

In sum, you can’t agree on what problem it is you’re trying to solve, but you’re all pretty damn sure that you’re very upset about whatever your own version of the problem is, and therefore you want to do something, and this is something, therefore you must do it. And if we really haven’t figured out on the basis of 12 years’ New Labour government that this is a lousy way to make decisions about regulation, then I despair of our collective stupidity.

(B) If businesses – or government, or anyone – misleads and manipulates people, the best remedy is education and effective self-esteem building. Not legislation, or regulation. Because – and I say this as a former tax adviser – people will always, always find a way round legislation or regulation. And then you’ll have to make more. And then you’ll do it again. Businesses are agile and will adapt. Government is clunky, and cannot win. It’s the old “teach a man to fish” proverb. If you regulate a single manipulative practice, you’ve saved some people from that manipulative practice. Teach people to resist and analyse manipulate practices effectively, and they’ll never need you to regulate for them again. This is simple empowering liberalism, for god’s sake.

(C) Moreover, part of the reason government cannot win actually has nothing to do with businesses. It’s the internet itself. Lots of people have already justifiably wondered how you’re going to stop under-18s looking at adult women’s mags. Well, that goes a thousandfold for the internet. Are you going to regulate all of it? Are you going to create one piece of regulation that stops any teenage girl ever seeing a photoshopped image on the internet? Just one piece, is that all it takes? No slippery slope at all? If you think the answer to this is yes, you’re being incredibly stupid (or you are Lord Mandelson and I claim my £5). If the answer is “No, but it’s a start, and maybe then we could regulate…” then you’re not a liberal.

And finally, mindful of tonight’s press coverage:

(D) If a liberal party is going to adopt a policy that is going to result in “Liberal Democrats ban such-and-such” headlines then there had better be a watertight reason why. And (see A-C) there ain’t.

And why on earth does the existence of an Asian advert playing on the Asian obsession with white skin mean you couldn’t effectively lobby a British company about photoshopped images in British advertising? Really, do just explain the logic behind that one. And, as regards your mention of Dove from yesterday, hey, maybe you could think about using whatever data they’re basing their Real Women campaign on to take to another company in a lobbying proposal? That would be an idea, wouldn’t it? But then, none of you actually seem remotely interested in learning about or seeking pointers on how to influence an industry whose activities you claim to feel so strongly about.

This is a lovely left-wing motion and I’m sure the left-wing grassroots are delighted, but please don’t have the gall to run that Lib Dems against the Nanny State fringe event when you pass censorship laws like this.

So what do you propose to create an equal opp in terms of freedom of expression? How am I the little person supposed to fight in your ‘free’ world about this b*llocks?

And nannying?

What the hell are you guys on? Have or can any of you explain a society that doesn’t cater to every friggin tax payer? And question, you’d think it’d be the US but guess what, even despite Bush’s war and all public services, they STILL kept up finance towards something as….’nannying and irrelevant’ as the arts because they had the foresight to realise that erm, economists, artists, plumbers, even mothers, cleaners, accountants and lol historians plus many more are all relevant in the functions that creates a sustainable society.

Because what you’re saying is ‘well, your fault you’re gonna die you skinny b*tch, ain’t my fauly you pathetic need to be nannyed human being’, so piss off and well fade away.

I’d LOVE to hear your opionions on mental health….wow…bet they’re brill….poor Darwin, he wouldn’t have lasted a sec with you geezers!