After Vogue released photos from its February issue starring Lena Dunham, people with eyes quickly realized that the images of Dunham are quite different from the way she looks on “Girls.” (RELATED: Vogue compares Lena Dunham to Bob Dylan)
She looks slimmer, taller and much more fabulous. Of course, Vogue retouches 99 percent of the images that appear in print, even if the subjects are supermodels. But for someone like Dunham who is — allegedly — extremely proud of her not-so-perfect, natural figure, it was something of a paradox that she would appear on the cover of a fashion magazine looking quite different.
A day after the photos were released, Jezebel offered $10,000 for the unretouched photos of Dunham because “Lena Dunham is a woman who trumpets body positivity, who’s unabashedly feminist, who has said that her naked body is ‘a realistic expression of what it’s like to be alive’ and ‘if you are not into me, that’s your problem.’ Her body is real. She is real. And for as lovely as the Vogue pictures are, they’re probably not terribly real.”
It didn’t take long for a poor production assistant to take them up on the offer, and just 22 hours later, the pre-Photoshop images appeared. Here is what Dunham, a supposed champion of accepting oneself exactly as they are, looks like with a hefty dose of digital nip and tucking.
Of course, Dunham may not have had anything to do with the decision for the magazine to digitally re-imagine her as a taller, thinner, different person. But for her to act like she is some sort of feminist icon who does not give into the Hollywood body image pressures by posing for a fashion magazine for publicity that she knew would probably Photoshop another head onto her body is grossly hypocritical.
Bob Dylan would never have put himself in this situation.
Go to Jezebel to see the rest of the images.