As a woman, you can live so far away from the rest of the world, but even in 2024, sexism still hits you there with full force. Georgie Purcell, Member of Parliament for the Australian state of Victoria, had to make this experience. The television station 9News Melbourne showed an edited image of the MPs to announce a debate program.
Purcell, however, was – to put it mildly – surprised when she saw her likeness. This was because the image had been manipulated in a way that went beyond the usual. Her white dress had been transformed into a sleeveless top that now exposed more of her belly button. And because they had been right there, her breasts also seemed to have magically gained volume.
She wasn’t the only one who couldn’t understand why the TV station had gone to all this trouble. To prepare the audience for an intellectual political debate, or to fuel the sexual fantasies of the viewers and the broadcaster? No wonder she posted something irritated on Twitter:
I put up with a lot yesterday. But having my body and outfit photoshopped by a media company was not on my bingo card. Note the enlarged breasts and the outfit, which is to be made more revealing. I can’t imagine that happening to a male MP. What’s going on?
After the public outcry, which was completely unexpected for the television station, the people responsible for the program hurriedly rowed back. The station’s director, Hugh Nailon, issued a public “apology”:
I would like to sincerely apologise to Georgie Purcell for a graphic error that occurred in last night’s bulletin.
Hugh Nailon, Director of 9News Melbourne
Our graphics department sourced an online image of Georgie to use in our story on duck hunting.
As is common practice, the image was resized to fit our specs. During that process, the automation by Photoshop created an image that was not consistent with the original.
This did not meet the high editorial standards we have and for that we apologise to Ms Purcell unreservedly.
So far, so bad. Because on closer inspection, some elements of a good apology are missing. A genuine apology contains several steps, which the American behavioral scientist David P. Boyd has set out in seven consecutive steps. He sees it as the art of a public apology in these seven steps:
- Revelation
- Recognition
- Responsiveness
- Responsibility
- Remorse
- Refund
- Reform
Incidentally, I write about this in my book Sorry Not Sorry: The Art of the Non-Apology, about the various tricks used to make a supposed apology that are more out of necessity but are not genuine apologies.
But what about Hugh Nailon? What’s bothering me here? First of all, he doesn’t take the blame as the person responsible, he blames it on a “graphics error“, an unspecified “graphics department” and “automation in Photoshop”. This corresponds to the 5th Artifice: It happened, but not to me.
As a spokesperson of Adobe, the manufacturer of Photoshop, also noted, there is no automatic function in the program that automatically sexualizes images of women and retouches away clothing to expose the abdominal region and enlarge breasts. Someone in Nailon’s team has already done this quite deliberately.
The fact that this approach would not meet “high editorial standards” makes us wonder about these standards. Because neither are we aware of them and the fact that the deliberate sexualization of female TV guests should be avoided would not require any special editorial standards. But this sentence says something else: “our standards have been violated, so we are the real victim!” This is the 13th Artifice: it happened, but we are the real victim.
Is this followed by something like an indication of what they intend to do in future to prevent this from happening again? Of course not. We can be sure that the broadcaster will try again.