Troian Bellisario Calls for Mandatory Warnings on Photoshopped Ads: 'We All Look Different'

Troian Bellisario, who previously revealed that she had an eating disorder, calls for mandatory warnings on photoshopped images

Photo: David Livingston/Getty Images

Troian Bellisario knows how harmful it can be to see unnaturally perfect bodies in advertisements and magazine spreads.

The former Pretty Little Liars star, 31, has spoken openly about her previous struggles with anorexia, and she wants to help others avoid eating disorders by requiring companies to make it clear when they use photoshopped images.

Bellisario shared a video about France’s new law that makes it illegal to retouch photos of models.

“We in America Should have MANDITORY WARNINGS on images in ADvertisements & PRESS that have been doctored,” she wrote on Instagram. “Because the real issue (in my opinion) is that we are selling products (clothes, perfume, music, film) on unrealistic and doctored images of people. And I for one would want to know, I would want my friends to know and strangers and especially young men and women to know if they were looking at something real or something fake.”

The actress says that it would stop people from comparing themselves to body types that aren’t even real.

“Then we can see clearly that we are being sold products on the basis of first making ourselves feel less than (not pretty enough not skinny enough not healthy enough whatever) so we ‘need to buy this product to be like the person in the ad. And feel better about ourselves.’ Well guess what. The person in the ad doesn’t even look like that.”

“What an amazing world it would be if we could just acknowledge that. And then celebrate that we all look different, have different bodies and different backgrounds and histories, and then find all of those differences beautiful.”

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Bellisario disagrees, though, with France’s decision to have a minimum weight requirement for runway models.

“I do not want to BODY SHAME naturally thin women nor do I want to dictate whether or not they should work based on weight or whether or not they have a mental illness (ED) [eating disorder],” she adds.

Bellisario recently wrote about her anorexia for Lenny, explaining that the disorder took over her mind.

“There is a part of my brain that defies logic. Once, it completely convinced me I should live off 300 calories a day, and at some point, it told me even that was too much,” she wrote in July.

Bellisario also turned her experience into a movie, Feed, to help others who are struggling, and to aid her own recovery.

“It is my greatest hope that someone watching it, struggling with the same challenges I do, might think, What if I were enough too? So with all the courage I can muster, I give it to you, I give it to that one person, in hopes that it could make them feel enough.”