Have you ever looked inside of a magazine, billboard or advertisement? How do the models look; thin, ideal, and perfect?  Do you ever wonder how they achieved those looks? It's called photoshop.  My goal is to raise awareness about retouched pictures and ultimately have a warning label on every published, photoshopped photo.  A photoshopped picture is one that has been altered in anyway, to make the subject usually look better.  Almost all of the photos published in magazines, billboards, and advertisements are retouched in some way.  The pictures are altered for the model to have thinner legs, thighs, flawless skin, whiter teeth, tanner skin, flatter stomaches, higher cheek bones, bigger breasts, and no wrinkles.  These are unrealistic ideas being exposed to young kids and teens.  When people look at photos, they do not assume the picture is altered, only that it is the ideal and normal American and what we should try to achieve.  If the models themselves cannot attain those ideal looks without photoshop, what are the rest of us supposed to do?  Dr. Barbara McAneny of the American Medical Association, AMA, stated, "We must stop exposing impressionable children and teenagers to advertisements portraying models with body types only attainable with the help of photo editing software."  If each photoshopped photo had a warning sign, people would understand that the model does not actually look like that, but is altered to appear "perfect."  America should follow France and England's proposal to have a warning label on their published pictures that would say, Warning: Models in this image may not be as thin as they appear."  This would help with young teens feeling bad about their bodies because of what they see in magazines and nowadays on the internet.  It is important to raise awareness of how many pictures are photoshopped and to find away to warn people when the photos are altered.

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