Ralph Lauren Photoshopped Ad Saga - Altered Image or Model's Actual Size?
Filed under: News
The picture that's causing all the controversy. Is it really the work of Ralph Lauren or a mystery photoshopper?
After finding an advertisement of longtime Ralph Lauren model Filippa Hamilton-Palmstierna with her entire body whittled down to an almost emaciated state, a blogger at BoingBoing.com put the picture online with a caption that read: "Dude, her head's bigger than her pelvis," as reported by The Huffington Post.
After dozens of comments flooded in criticizing the ad and Ralph Lauren, The Huffington Post reports that the legal team at Ralph Lauren accused Boing Boing of copyright infringement for reprinting the ad.
Boing Boing editors fired back saying Ralph Lauren's accusations were bogus and that their actions were legal and fell under the umbrella of "classic fair use: a reproduction 'for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting.'"
Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing's co-editor told StyleList that getting yelled at by the companies the site criticizes is something Boing Boing editors are used to. "We have indeed gotten spurious legal threats before and have always used mockery as our tool of choice for dealing with them," he says.
Part of the "mockery" they are using with this Ralph Lauren fiasco includes publishing Lauren's letter to Boing Boing, as well as keeping the original post up.
Apparently, all of this mess stems from a picture that might not even be a legitimate image finished by the hands of Ralph Lauren's advertising team. Boing Boing editors actually snatched the image off of a blog called Photoshop Disasters, which follows all of the gross misuses of the notorious retouching tool.
However, Photoshop Disasters acquires their images through anonymous sources who randomly send them in, which doesn't bode too well for Boing Boing's case that Ralph Lauren was somehow responsible for the overly altered image.
Yet the editors at Photoshop Disasters tell StyleList that their anonymous source claims to have taken the photograph of the ad at a "trendy" mall in Tokyo, and believe it's a picture is of an outdoor poster.
While everyone knows that many designers abuse Photoshop, it would be very surprising if the forces at Ralph Lauren took an ad to that far of an unnatural-looking extreme, especially when all of their other ads featuring Hamilton-Palmstierna look respectfully in proportion.
But what do you think? Should Boing Boing have posted the image without authenticating it first? Should Ralph Lauren have taken the legal action they did? Leave a comment below.
To find out more about the controversy over computer enhanced images -- including proposed laws to clearly label retouched pictures in both the U.K. and France -- keep reading.
lexmani 10-08-2009 @ 6:03AM
I was lucky enough to never have been overweight in my life. That all ended after the birth of my second child. I got down to 20 pounds over my normal weight but no matter what I did I couldn't lose the rest. I didn't know if was age catching up with me or if somehow my metabolism changed. Whatever the reason, nothing was working. I tried all the bogus "diet" pills that we see all over the internet, but are just scams. All I ever lost with that stuff was money. One of my friends, knowing what I was going through, told me that she had been losing weight using a special plan http://bit.ly/FatLoss4You It laid out the facts in a way I never saw before and had easy to follow meal plans and diets. Not only have I lost the weight and kept it off but I'm leading a healthier lifestyle, mostly from the knowledge I gained from this amazing program.
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Lee 10-08-2009 @ 6:07AM
Hi everyone I found young Angelina Jolie's sex tape is here:
http://cli.gs/-Angelina-Jolie-
Emma 10-08-2009 @ 7:00AM
I have always been very afraid of aging, you know, becoming old and useless and unattractive. When I turned 50, I decided to do something about it. I've spent fortunes on face creams and anti-aging serums… but using GenFX is the first time I've tried turning back the clock from the inside out. It's also the last time I'll spend a fortune on face creams! Now everyone says I look 35!
http://tiny.cc/GenFX
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Chris 10-08-2009 @ 12:52PM
Isn't there some kind of law about using these sites to advertise?
Inkling 10-08-2009 @ 1:44PM
LEXMANI >You may not be fat, but your head is fatter than the model in this picture, FATHEAD!
LEE >YOU might like looking at illicit pics of Jolie and enjoying it, but the rest of us don't enjoy seeing your ads and could care less. So, keep it on the DL, OK?
EMMA >Maybe you didn't want to get "old and useless", but you have definitely managed to get "useless".
WEALTHYCUPID01 >I don't know if you are "wealthy" or "cupid", but you are definitely "STOOPID", and so is anybody that would feel the need to go to your lame site.
BLOGGERS >How sick of this blog spamming are all of you? PLEASE use that link at the bottom of the screen to make a personal complaint to these sites and AOL and let them know you are sick of them. Obviously, just clicking on the "exclamation point" or the "report" link after their comment is not going to stop this. We need to be just as proactive against this type of spamming as we have been against mail spam and telemarketing. If we start complaining that we are no longer going to go to these websites unless they stop allowing these idiots to post their ads this will stop. If these people start getting fined or charged for illegal solicitation and use of a privade web owners site to advertise they would definitely stop doing this.
jello 10-08-2009 @ 1:47PM
These spammers just drop their spam and leave...they don't come back to check on the comments...no one is monitoring them, so I think the posters who are trying to scold them are wasting their time.
Steven 10-08-2009 @ 1:52PM
Inkling, these spammers are not going to read your reply. The spam messages were posted by bots possibly through computers infected by trojan horses for this purpose.
Lisa 10-08-2009 @ 4:40PM
I wish I were that skinny!
jose 10-08-2009 @ 6:20AM
dat is not even attractive......man im from the hood.....n im also Dominican and i have good taste in women.........n i wouldnt even hit dat wit da other guys $%$%.........like she needs sum whey gainer......15-20 more pounds......n den she would look better in that outfit.....dese ppl be outrageous in the model entertainment......dat shyt is ugly.....now she might get picture for ralph lauren....but can she get a real man.....
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sidewlksurfer 10-08-2009 @ 8:04AM
english...maybe? some spell check possibly? hood, really? who cares. next time you would like to express your opinion, try using some sort of proper english before you embarass yourself. "dat, da, den, dese, whey"...wow.
so yes, girls are being misled by advertisements these days, its ridiculous. this picture has to be photo-shopped.
csiblackwell 10-08-2009 @ 9:48AM
Oh-Tay!
Can you say il-lit-er-ate?
tulipferia 10-08-2009 @ 9:42AM
Did you actually read the article at all? The image has been altered with Photoshop, she's not actually that skinny. Nobody could be that skinny.
Artemis 10-08-2009 @ 12:15PM
If you look closely, the right side (as you are looking at the pic) is so definitely photoshopped, her left hand is missing.
LADY T 10-08-2009 @ 1:12PM
ALL I WUD LIKE TO STATE... IS THAT....
IT IS 2000 AND 9 PEOPLE... YES 2009
AND THAT DOES MEAN, IF U HAVENT LOOKED AROUND, THERE ARE MORE OBESE PEOPLE IN AMERICA, THAN AN ANY OTHER COUNTRY. AND AS THE YEARS MOVE FORWARD AND WE CONTINUE TO EAT ALL THIS EXTRA NON-HEALTHY FOOD... OUR NEXT GENERATIONS WILL ONLY GET FATTER, THAN THE LAST..... IM NOT SKINNY AND IM NOT OBESE. IM CHUBBY, FAT, DELIGHTFULY PLUM....
BUT WHERE THE HELL ARE OUR CLOTHES AT?????
DEBATE OR ANWSER THAT ONE
cb 10-08-2009 @ 1:45PM
Dude! You are butchering the English language the same way those photoshop dropouts butchered the model!
Delacourte 10-08-2009 @ 2:24PM
Come on Glenn Beck,you aren't fooling anyone with your fake "hood" posting! Dominican? HAHAHAHAHA!!!
Debs-frm-GP 10-08-2009 @ 6:35AM
OMG this is so sad, especially for the young girls heading towards their teens,, Even way back in my day, I was thinking I needed to diet at the age of ten or younger, Now I see girls even younger worrying about it. Yes one reason for this in very young girls is because the parents have let them grow up with no physical activity, eating the wrong foods and too much food,so the kids of today are over weight.Then now they have the doctors understandably telling the parents the kids need better health habits, I have seen these kids being told to diet, such a wrong word to use with these young impressionable kids. Now putting this horribly skinny unhealthy woman on the covers of magizines is just unresponsible to say the least... How dare they....
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mary 10-08-2009 @ 6:49AM
that pic is so fake. i wish advertisers would just cut the crap. nothing is real anymore. we have become such a fake society.
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errrr 10-08-2009 @ 6:58AM
Completly sad. She looks awful. Totally anorexic! As far as our children's weight problem,I told my husband years ago when they started phasing out PE @ schools that American children are going to be overweight. As stats prove our kids are getting heavier most kids in my day recieved exersize and sports through our PE programs. Lots of times this was the only time most kids got to exersize. Now our kids are paying the price. we absolutly need to bring back PE to schools
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