Campaign to stop Cleo airbrushing girls takes to social media, Cleo editor: check your facts before criticising us
Post on Cleo's Facebook page
A campaign to pressure Cleo magazine into changing its policy on digitally altering young girls has taken to social media, with women posting images of ‘real girls’ on Cleo’s Facebook page and demanding a change in the magazine’s policy on airbrushing.
Last week a petition was started by a woman named Jessica Barlow, who plans to launch her own women’s magazine that does not airbrush images of girl.
That petition, raised via Change.org, now has 13,000 signatures.
The campaign – called ‘Real Girls Cleo’ – has also taken to Twitter with the hashtag #realgirlscleo. It also has its own Facebook page.
One of the comments on Facebook read:
“Cleo, we’re not asking you to stop using “beautiful” girls in your magazine. We’re just asking that you use a range of beautiful girls, of different shapes and sizes, including skinny (because they are real too!) and stop photoshopping them – or at least let us know when you do. The mental and physical health of girls and women is being affected by YOUR actions. This is an opportunity for you to lead the way Cleo, be brave, do the right thing!”
Some posters have complained that their posts are being deleted.
Cleo has not budged on its airbrushing policy since the campaign launched.
The magazine’s editor Gemma Crisp told Mumbrella in a statement: “While everyone is welcome to their own opinion about CLEO magazine, we would have appreciated it if Jessica Barlow had contacted us to check her facts before starting her petition. I can’t speak for the many other magazines who use PhotoShop, but at CLEO, we do not retouch photos of people’s bodies to change their shape. Regular readers of the magazine will know that along with celebrity stories, fashion, health and career advice, we feature real girls in EVERY issue, as they are (without altering the images) in line with our PhotoShop guidelines.”
Crisp pointed to Cleo’s rules on re-touching to re-state the magazine’s case.
I’m so impressed with this initiative!
This is such an important issue and very close to my heart as I have 2 young daughters.
Well done and thank you Jessica.
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Ahhh, the key lies in this comment:
“or at least let us know when you do”.
This is not difficult to ask. It is by far a pragmatic and reasonable request.
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Thanks Katie, I appreciate your support. Thanks also to mUmBRELLA for writing this article!
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…and motoring magazines should start putting clapped-out bombs that we all drive on the cover, and food mags should put burnt chops and frozen peas, and health mags should show models with beer guts and hairy arms, and BRW should do an annual poor list and travel magazines should do cover stories on Cessnock! Please – it’s called fantasy! It’s the media, that’s their schtick! If you don’t like it, don’t buy it. Watch TV instead. Now that’s not full of attractive, heavily made-up people, is it!!!!
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Great idea. Good luck to them…
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And it would appear that they’re deleting posts and not responding to comments either…
https://www.facebook.com/pages/CLEO-Magazine/305423871144
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What a great idea, showing the natural beauty of a woman as they really are. It is about time we saw women as they really are to take the pressure of women to look so perfect but this is so unattainable.
I too have daughters and share Katie view.
I do hope also they place a limit on the age of their models from 18 plus so young girls are not made to look older then they are and forced into the adult world of modeling before they can handle it.
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Why stop at Cleo? Every major women’s magazine in the country does this.
For parents of young girls 12-15, I recommend Indigo-4-girls (www.indigo4girls.com). They have a strict no-airbrushing policy and are all about empowering young girls with body-friendly and age-appropriate content. Sadly, magazines like this trying to do the right thing don’t get the reader numbers they deserve.
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Great initiative!
This might spark something, it gets great PR and makes people more aware. But said thing is, unless people stop buying it there is no real incentive for them to stop. People need to put their money with their opinion.
Same goes for any opinion in any industry, money talks.
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Yeah, let’s put a tax on alco-pops, enforce plain packaging on cigarettes, ban advertising junk food. All great ideas.
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Isn’t this the facebook of the New Zealand version of the magazine?
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Whilst I support informed debate around any issues relating to the media and the content featured in magazines, websites, TV, films etc I cannot condone bullying, particularly of a personal nature, on FB or other social media. Sometimes people get caught up in a feeding frenzy and forget there are real people on the receiving end of the anonymous insults. I think the point has been made and taken on board.
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Disclaimers at the bottom of airbrushed images sounds like a good idea.
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I think disclaimers at the bottom of an airbrushed image is a realistic compromise, however, I also think that the notion of banning photoshopped images in glossy magazines is unrealistic. As many comments on this article suggest, the media thrives on fantasy. If you want to see real girls looking great, take a walk down the road or look out your window: Australia is full of them! Magazines like Cleo don’t pretend not to photoshop their images – it’s a given and it continues to prevail as standard through advertising and other forms of popular media. A cheeseburger from McDonald’s doesn’t look half as enticing in real life as it does in print and TV ads – yet it still tastes good!
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Ugh. If you feel “bad” about yourself, that’s on you. Don’t blame a magazine. I look far from “perfect” and “skinny” and do not remotely resemble the models and celebrities ANY magazine features, but I have an amazing sense of self-confidence no one can take away from me. And by the way, if you’re going to start petitions and waltz in with pitchforks and knives, can you please provide sufficient PROOF?! I have been reading CLEO and Cosmo for 10 years and they have always done ‘REAL BODIES’ spreads and now have even put normal and plus size models in their fashion spreads.
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This Jess Barlow really did need to check her facts. NO celebrity image would be approved to Cleo without retoucing. If they wanted to run an unretouched celeb on the cover, they wouldn’t be able to even go to print.
Good luck with launching her new magazine in this media climate! All Women’s magazines are the same, Marie Claire, Cosmo, Madison they all have the same amount of retouching. Girlfriend magazine does try to be transparent and avoids overly photoshopped covers. They also state when images have been airbrushed. Perhaps other magazines should follow if it’s an issue.
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If the debate really is about the body image and esteem of young girls, I would suggest that nothing in any woman’s mag is any good for them – unless you really want them to know all the lamest sex tips, how to get a flat stomach by the weekend or what expensive outfit they should buy next. You want your daughters to read something empowering? Send them to Rookie http://rookiemag.com/
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Although I am sure what Jess is trying to do is good hearted, personally I like to read magazines with aspirational models who make me want to work hard. Magazines always have been and always will be a point where people turn to for looking at something to inspire and give them motivation. Yes, real models can do this, but why is it that just CLEO is getting shunned for this? I think it is a witch hunt and they have pointed the finger at CLEO. Why not all the other magazines? There is definite airbrushing everywhere else. And as Mark said, which celebrity in their right mind would approved an unphotoshopped image? Wasn’t it not that long ago someone went on a cover, hardly unphotoshopped and it was a huge deal? Maybe she should try and get ALL magazines to do less photoshopping, but until she stops the tirade against one magazine, I won’t be supporting, that is just bullying and it achieves nothing.
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Get Finkelstein and Ricketson on the job. That regional Labor MP Steve Gibbons might like to help as well. They’re all experts in the field.
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I interned at CLEO a few years ago and can vouch for the fact that they DO NOT alter a woman’s shape or body. I saw images pre and post photoshop – the most offensive things changed were a stray flyaway hair, mottled light on an arm.
Would not photoshopping these images help prevent insecurities in young, vulnerable minds? Unlikely. Will it make the magazine look less professional and unkempt? Quite possibly.
Hate to be the devil’s advocate, and whilst I didn’t particularly love my time at CLEO, I can see where they are coming from!
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Good on Cleo for having the balls to stand up to the keyboard warrior brigade. Sooner or later brands will realise that the very large majority of these social media witch hunts are nothing more than a storm in a teacup fuelled by bandwagon slacktivists and misinformation (like the person who started this one deliberately ignoring what Cleo’s airbrush policy was). But hey — never the truth get in the way of a campaign to coincidentally leverage social media “outrage” as an opportunity to raise funds for a magazine project that the campaign starter states they’ve had in mind for years, right?
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Ah hasn’t the Federal Govt already gone into this? Quick Hansard check Minister Kate Ellis circa 2010 (if memory serves me correct).
The thing is you need govt and the media working together and at the moment everyone is too concerned about the NBN roll out and the digital future of News and Fairfax. Also why just target Cleo, as many of you have pointed out on here.
I just hope for Jessica’s sake her campaign can create some talk that generates real
action.
Where are the semi retired 80s supermodels when you need them as a spokeswoman? :-O
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”This is beauty to me not air burshed, fake tanned,” – although we don’t mind the occasional death stick. Nice choice of image.
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There is a simple solution. Exile all good looking men and gorgeous women who have svelte ripped bodies – send them to the moon or another planet. Then we wouldn’t aspire to such images.
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Surely magazines (men’s and women’s) are solely designed to make their readers feel as insecure as possible so that they buy the various “beautifying” products of their advertisers?
Magazines “empowering” readers is the biggest crock of shit out there.
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