Norway prohibits the use of filters and tweaks on social media if users are not notified in advance. Thus, they promote the fight against beauty standards far from reality.

The Minister of Children and Equality announced this milestone with a very clear goal: to end the unrealistic beauty canons that are used in both advertising and social media. Norway’s society and collective of influencers have applauded the decision and have joined it to warn of the dangers of unreal beauty, which often leads to a misleading advertising.

Unrealistic and unhealthy beauty canons

Pore-free, wrinkle-free skin, fine-tuned chin, small nose, tall, marked cheekbones, endless lashes, and fleshy lips. This is the current beauty standard promoted by women of great influence like the Kardashian sisters. Thanks to filters in social media like Instagram or Snapchat, showing off that face is within anyone’s reach with just one click. 

The tweaks come from the world of advertising and Photoshop experts to the hands of young people, the most influenceable group. The most alarming result: dissociative disorder (identify with your filtered image instead of the real one) and dysmorphic disorder (concern for imaginary physical defects).

Many problems add to these pathologies, such as lack of self-esteem, social pressure, eating disorders, complexes, and so on. They lead young people, and not so young, to feeling bad about their image simply because their referents of bodies are retouched and standardized. 

The fight against filters is becoming global

Norway is not the only country that has been alarmed by this dangerous trend. In France, since 2017, it is mandatory that any fashion campaign informs whether the images are retouched. In the United Kingdom, on the other hand, the #FilterDrop campaign has been launched this year, promoted by make-up artist and model Sasha Pallari, who is against the use of filters. The campaign has created such as stir that the ASA, the country’s advertising regulatory body, has joined, too.

More and more countries are joining, and more and more women too, especially actresses and models, who refuse to appear touched up in campaigns. The latest case, and one of the most famous of the year, has been that of the actress Kate Winslet in the series Mare of Easttown. She asked to redo the advertising poster on two occasions to avoid spreading an unreal and wrinkle-free face. 

In our country, the situation is also alarming, and today 50% of women and 20% of men use cosmetic treatments. Experts say that more and more young boys and girls use them, and point to social media as the main culprit for this trend.

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