This comes after damning revelations in the Wall Street Journal last September that internal research at Facebook (now Meta) shows that the company's Instagram platform makes body issues worse for one in three teenage girls.
Thirty-two per cent of teen girls said that when they felt bad about their bodies, Instagram made them feel worse.
Disturbingly, the report also found that among users who experienced suicidal thoughts, 12 per cent in the UK and 6 per cent in the United States linked them to Instagram.
"It just makes no sense to me that we allow it," Quinn tells the Herald.
"We put warning labels on food and cigarettes saying, 'this may harm your health' yet we have no regulations around unrealistic images saying 'this may harm your mental health' because that's exactly what it does.
"Research shows that there has been a huge rise in mental health issues and body dysmorphia in young people, particularly young women, which has coincided with the development of social media."
The impact of online imagery can be insidious, argues Quinn, quietly shifting perceptions of what real looks like.
"We start to build an idea in our heads of what a person 'should' look like and if we see too many unrealistic images then that image in our head will be built up to be something that isn't real.
"We then look in the mirror and are held back by all of our imperfections. We believe we're alone in having them without realising how common they actually are because of the unrealistic world we've been absorbing."
Quinn has long called for legislative change that would require publishers to disclose when an image has been Photoshopped or retouched. Such changes would have made sense, historically, when photo editing software was exclusive and used only by major advertisers and magazines.
However the technology has expanded rapidly and the vast majority of photo editing is now done by ordinary people through the power of their smartphones.
Legislating against this type of use would be incredibly difficult, not only because of the challenges in moderating social media posts, but also because the business models of some apps – like Snapchat – rely on the liberal use of filters.
So Quinn is shifting her approach to encourage action from those who have the greatest sway on social media trends: influencers.
She urges online celebrities to add the BodyRight watermark to their social posts that have not been retouched in any way. She hopes it could become a ubiquitous copyright symbol for the human body.
"Bodyright provides transparency," she says. "Once the symbol becomes known and common, we will start to have an understanding of what's real and what isn't."
The Bodyright concept was developed by Auckland creative agency TBWA, run by chief executive Catherine Harris.
"We felt we had the opportunity to help course correct some of the unrealistic portrayal of people across advertising and social media," Harris said.
"This issue started with the media, brands and the re-touching agencies have been doing for decades – and it has now become rampant on social media. We now see platforms automatically re-touching, phones offering built-in 'filters' to alter, smooth and slim people's faces and form.
"We believed we could play a part in challenging this."
The advertising, film and media industries have all played a role in developing the concept of the ideal that is now been replicated en masse across social media.
These industries are now working to promote greater diversity in terms of who they profile and put on billboards, but as Quinn points out, these efforts often don't go far enough.
"We are at a place now where we are focusing on diversity and inclusion so that everyone feels seen but what good is diversity if we're then retouching the images to look a certain way," she says.
"It's like saying: 'look, we have an amputee model but she still has to project an image of perfection so we'll Photoshop in flawless skin and no curves' or curve models but we'll Photoshop out half their curves.
"It just makes no sense and it's directly impacting our young people."
That said, the concept of beauty has proven fickle, shifting as tastes evolve. What has become clearer in the modern age is that we have sway over what is perceived as beautiful and how long it persists.
And nudging today's status quo might require something as simple as a brave Kiwi amputee, standing proudly and proclaiming: "enough!"
