Tracy and I have written before about the need to change the range of images we associate with “fitness.” See her post Inclusive Fitness and my post No more headless fatties, why not use images of active fat people complete with heads instead?.
Stock photography images of women are pretty revealing whether it’s women laughing alone with salad, women trying to drink water badly, or women using laptops awkwardly. The stock photo images of feminists aren’t great either. Of course.
Now things might be getting better as Getty And ‘Lean In’ Reimagine Stock Photos Of Women.
See also LeanIn.org and Getty Aim to Change Women’s Portrayal in Stock Photos
To try to remedy the problem, Ms. Sandberg’s nonprofit organization, LeanIn.org, is to announce on Monday a partnership with Getty Images, one of the biggest providers of stock photography, to offer a special collection of images that it says represent women and families in more empowering ways.
“When we see images of women and girls and men, they often fall into the stereotypes that we’re trying to overcome, and you can’t be what you can’t see,” Ms. Sandberg said in an interview.
Here’s some from their collection that portray physically active women:
The Lean In images are still pretty limited terms of body size and shape. It’s still the case that none of them look anything like me. But there have been other developments on the stock photo front this week. The Yale’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity recently took positive steps to improve the images of obese people in the press.
In an effort to reduce stigmatizing portrayals of overweight and obese persons in the news, we have created a Media Gallery that provides a collection of brief, professional video clips and images that depict obese individuals in a variety of settings. These images and video clips provide a non-biased representation of adults who are overweight and obese, and are intended for use as background and b-roll video footage for the news media. Our Media Gallery can help promote accurate coverage of obesity-related topics in news reporting and challenge harmful weight-based stereotypes.
See New stock photos of obese people offer a respectful portrayal of being fat [20 pictures]
