Last week, we discussed the Lena Dunham-Photoshop issue. It was pretty complicated, so if you want to review last week’s post, go here. The basic gist? Lena snidely bitched out a Spanish magazine for not “being honest” with their readers and Photoshopping an older photo of her. Except that the magazine, Tentaciones, clapped back and gave a detailed explanation of how they licensed an older photo and everything was done with the permission of Lena’s publicist. And they even showed her how they cropped the original image. Instead of apologizing for an obvious mistake, Lena then went on a lengthy rant about something something retouching, society at large, Hillary Clinton, etc. It was pretty annoying. Even more annoying? Lena is doubling down on all of it by devoting an essay in her Lenny newsletter to how she’s not going to stand for Photoshop anymore! After recapping the Tentaciones incident in exhaustive, it’s-not-my-fault-and-I-won’t-apologize fashion, she wrote:
But something snapped when I saw that Spanish cover. Maybe it was the feeling of barely recognizing myself and then being told it was 100 percent me but knowing it probably wasn’t and studying the picture closely for clues. Maybe it was realizing that was an image I had at some point seen, approved, and most likely loved. Maybe it was the fact that I no longer understand what my own thighs look like. But I knew that I was done.
Not done with getting my picture taken (once an insufferable ham, always an insufferable ham) but done with allowing images that retouch and reconfigure my face and body to be released into the world. The gap between what I believe and what I allow to be done to my image has to close now. If that means no more fashion-magazine covers, so be it. I respect the people who create those magazines and the job they have to do. I thank them for letting me make a few appearances and for making me feel gorgeous along the way. But I bid farewell to an era when my body was fair game.
I’m not the first female actor to express this, to demand a different approach. I’m looking at you, Kate Winslet, Jamie Lee Curtis, Zendaya. Thank you for letting me know that making such a choice or statement was possible. If any magazines want to guarantee they’ll let my stomach roll show and my reddened cheek make an appearance, I am your girl Friday. Anything that will let me be honest with you. But moreover, I want to be honest with me.
This body is the only one I have. I love it for what it’s given me. I hate it for what it’s denied me. And now, without further ado, I want to be able to pick my own thigh out of a lineup. Lena Dunham has five very different scars on her abdomen. Don’t even ask.
[From Lena’s latest Lenny Letter]
She also briefly touched upon the Vogue controversy from a few years ago, where Vogue blatantly retouched and Photoshopped her photos, and when Jezebel pointed it out and put out a bounty for the un-retouched photos, Lena threw a hissy fit and later said that Jezebel had made a “monumental error in their approach to feminism.” That error was not waiting until Lena wanted to say the same thing, I guess, because the point that she’s making in this Lenny letter is exactly the point Jezebel made years ago: that consumers have the right to know what’s being done to these photos, and that physical perfection is a myth being sold to young women. But I guess we’re supposed to be so grateful that Lena is finally acknowledging the problem, at long last, just because…? What exactly? Girls is ending and no one cares and she needs attention some other way?
Photos courtesy of Fame/Flynet.
Leave a reply