Join Our Family and Ask the FTC to Help Stop Advertising Hurting Our Kids

Every parent thinks their children are perfect and my wife and I are no different. We want our eight year-old daughter and seven year-old son to grow up knowing they’re beautiful just the way they are. But every day our message to them as parents is undermined by the messages of advertisers "photoshopping" the people in their ads, creating false and unrealistic expectations of what our kids can and should look like.

These ads are weapons of mass perfection and their casualties are stark. 53% of 13 year-old girls are unhappy with their bodies; by the time they are 17, 78% will be. In fact, the 3 most common mental health issues amongst girls -- eating disorders, depression, and low self-esteem -- can be linked to the images they see of themselves in the media. And boys are impacted also, with 16% HS boys suffering from disordered eating.

When a prescription drug is making people sick, we ask for an investigation. When false, deceptive and "photoshopped" advertising -- creates anatomically impossible, fake, and unhealthy images of human bodies -- is making our children sick, in the absence of industry self-regulation, the body responsible for investigating deceptive advertising and protecting consumers, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), has a duty to step in and investigate what's making our kids (and adults too) sick. That’s why I’m asking you to join me and my family in supporting the passage and implementation of the bipartisan Truth in Advertising Act.

This legislation would direct the FTC to develop a regulatory framework for ads that materially change the faces and bodies of the people in them, in order to reduce the damage this type of advertising does to our children. We're not talking about regulating that making a blue sky bluer, or photoshopping away a fly-away hair. We're talking about ads that change the shape, size, proportion, color,and enhance or remove the features of the people in them.

We need the FTC's help because ads sell more than products; they sell attitudes, values, images, identity, and expectations…all in order to sell products. We need their help because pictures are claims, and worth at least 1000 words. And if these photoshopped ads told the same boldfaced lies in words that they do in pictures, action would have been taken long ago.

Congress and the FTC are considering this legislation right now and we need signatures and comments from as many people as possible who want children to grow up knowing they are more than the sum of their parts. Please join me in supporting the Truth in Advertising Act (HR 4445) and ask the FTC to protect my children, your children, America’s children from advertisers’ deceptive weapons of mass perfection.