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NYT's "Ethicist" Says Photoshopped Ralph Lauren Ads Are False Advertising, Should Carry Warnings

By Jim Edwards

Updated on: October 23, 2009 / 11:41 AM EDT / MoneyWatch

Randy Cohen, who writes "The Ethicist" column in The New York Times, is to East Coast liberals what Judge Judy is to the rest of America: You ask him to solve an argument, and he solves it. Now he's come out against Ralph Lauren and its bobble-head doll ads, and in favor of the French/U.K. Liberal Democratic Party idea of enforcing warning labels on fashion ads that have been too heavily edited in PhotoShop. He calls it "false advertising":

... we already accept labels that list a product's ingredients or assess its nutritional value or warn of dangers in its use. Similar transparency should apply to phony-baloney advertising photographs.

To bolster his case, he produced these two versions of his own mugshot. The top one is the real thing: He's a pointy-headed, spectacle-wearing intellectual, just as you suspected! The lower one has been given the Lauren treatment. Check out those thick, blond locks. So tuggable!

More seriously, Cohen's column produced a stream of reader comments, many of the complaining. This is America! First Amendment! etc.!:

Great idea! Let's make it possible so that people don't have to think at all! Never have to make judgments or decisions.

BNET's take: While advertisers have a free-speech right to produce fictitious images, those rights are curtailed by false and deceptive advertising laws, some of which are occasionally enforced by the FTC. It would be interesting if photo manipulation in the fashion world became so manipulative that it amounted to consumer fraud ...