Photoshop till you drop
IT’S BEEN AN interesting couple of weeks — Dove’s Real Beauty campaign turned 10, Aerie’s new Aerie Real ads (r.) feature models — sans airbrush or Photoshop — in the brand’s lingerie, and an editor leaked the nonairbrushed photos of
Lena Dunham’s much-hyped Vogue cover shoot to Jezebel.
While we love the Dove ads — those women were beautiful — we’re all for a little airbrushing. In fact, we’d like to be airbrushed right now if you could.
KLG: You bet I won’t do a cover unless they proceed to airbrush me. You know, the world doesn’t want to look at that. But I do applaud the fact that real women are beautiful, you know, because they are, but I’m not unless I’m airbrushed. HK: You’re nuts. KLG: By the way, you can take a few inches off my waist while you’re at it. I’d be grateful.
HK: You know what’s so funny? Even now with the iPhones and stuff, you can do everything to make your picture look better. Everyone’s sort of doing it on their own, anyway. Every time you have a picture it’s like, ‘Oh, that’s a better filter. I like Valencia’ and you’re making yourself look better and better and better.
KLG: But let’s be honest, we’re politically correct or at least we try to be, so we go, ‘Oh, gee, this is so much better so real women feel better about themselves and we’re all beautiful,’ but down deep we’re going, ‘Oh, look at her zit. Oh my God.’ That’s human nature.
So we have a choice. We either airbrush people so when we look at them we’re jealous and go, ‘Ugh, I wish I looked like that; why I don’t look like that?’ Or we let people look exactly like they look and then we rip ’em. ’Cause you can’t win either way.