Doctors: Put warnings on airbrushed photos and ban super-skinny models

The demands from the Royal College of Psychiatrists come as ultra-skinny women parade the catwalks of London Fashion Week.

The doctors pointed to "mounting and indisputable evidence" that false images of female perfection trigger eating disorders in young women and make it harder for them to recover.

The college wants to force publications to tell readers when they digitally erase imperfections from photographs or stretch them to look thinner.

It called for a warning label or "kitemark" to be placed on pictures where more than a certain percentage has been digitally manipulated.

Dr Adrienne Key, of the eating disorders section of the college, said: "It is shocking how much pictures are altered. There is a mounting and indisputable evidence that these tampered images are hugely damaging to women's self-esteem and can push them into eating disorders.

"They also trap them there. Lots of my patients find it really hard to listen to what we're telling them about putting on weight to be healthy when they are bombarded with unrealistically thin images of women."

The college slammed women's magazines for their "unhealthy obsession" with diets and with criticising celebrities' bodies. It said some media coverage goes as far as "glamorising" excessive weight loss, without treating anorexia as a serious mental illness.

It called on whichever party wins the election to set up a forum of media representatives and doctors to produce a new editorial ethics code.

In its "Call for Action" it also demanded a ban on the use of underweight models, and for the use of women of different shapes and weights to advertise clothes to be made obligatory.

Dr Key added: "We decided to speak out now as there are signs the industry is willing to change, with designer Mark Fast using bigger models.

"We want to see real change and investment from the industry and the backing of politicians."