The American Medical Association Declares War on Photoshop [VIDEO]

The American Medical Association is taking a stand against Photoshop. And I for one am all for it!

I understand why some magazines want to touch up some photos, but the extent that they go to these days is beyond comprehension. And the AMA is saying it’s caused unrealistic and unhealthy body image issues — especially among children and adolescents.

Now they've asked ad agencies to set more rigid guidelines for how such software is used before images are published.

As one reason for the request, AMA board member Barbara McAneny, M.D., referenced a now-infamous Ralph Lauren ad from 2009, saying, “In one image, a model’s waist was slimmed so severely, her head appeared to be wider than her waist. We must stop exposing impressionable children and teenagers to advertisements portraying models with body types only attainable with the help of photo editing software.”

Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of times when some editing is perfectly fine. With a high quality lense most cameras can catch more detail than you would know. Often a model's skin can become close to transparent with blood vessels showing through. They don't look like zombies or anything but it doesn't look real anymore because you can almost see through them. A little smoothing is fine there.

But plenty of widely read magazines, especially fashion magazines take all of the humanity out of the human. Skin is smoothed to be %100 blemish, and cellulite, free. Eyes are darkened, lips are enlarged (although I don't have any idea why), waists are shrunk, even teeth are whitened.

I don't believe the government has any place to tell a publication what they can and can't do to the pictures they take, as long as it isn't harming the person in the photo. But I also believe they have a responsibility to their readers. Especially when their readers are women since many women already have a hard enough time just trying to be ok with their own bodies.

Plus I for one prefer a natural looking woman. I don't find models attractive at all. They're too skinny. They look like walking skeletons to me. That's fine, it works for some guys, but not me. I have no problem with thin women as long as it looks natural and not anorexic. So when you take an already overly thin model, and put them through the Photoshop wringer it just looks wrong.

Well that's my take on it, but then again I'm a guy. I don't walk by a magazine in the rack and decide its diet time unless that magazine is next to the light beer.

If you want to know how bad its gotten, watch this video.