Photoshopping our favorite funny women is not so funny

Magazines have been Photoshopping pictures of women as long as they have had the technology. Backlash for this insulting practice has been happening for almost just as long.

Obviously, the idea that woman aren’t beautiful enough as they are is not a positive message. People have pushed back against the idea that they have to be thinner, taller or whiter to be considered beautiful.

Recently, Mindy Kaling was featured on the cover of respected fashion magazine Elle and Lena Dunham for Vogue. Both covers sparked controversy over how each woman was portrayed.

However, the real insult here was in the response both women had to the
controversy.

Two sets of photos from Dunham’s Vogue photo shoot are available online, pre- and post-Photoshop. The differences are small — a thinner waist, a longer neck — but they are still noticeable. Even worse, her partner in the photo shoot, Adam Driver, is untouched other than the overall lighting changes.

Kaling’s cover of Elle raised controversy because it was part of a series that featured three other thin, white women. While the other women had full body covers that were in color, Kaling’s cover cuts off at her bust and is in black and white.

Her cover is so obviously different from the others that it is ridiculous to think the magazine didn’t mean to single
her out.

Both covers had feminist bloggers in a rage over the magazines’ attempt to streamline two women who supposedly take pride in their bodies despite not being the unrealistic ideal sold to women by those same fashion
magazines.

Kaling’s cover was found to be especially offensive, as the black and white turn was seen as an attempt to disguise her skin color.
Instead of standing up for themselves, or their previous messages of body acceptance, both women denied seeing the problem with their covers.

They claimed they were just happy to be featured on the cover of a fashion
magazine.  

Both Dunham and Kaling are writers, producers and lead actors of successful prime-time comedies. Both series focus on young, smart woman living in New York, neither of whom would be considered the ideal body type — an issue both writers have used as material for jokes and satire on their shows.

Dunham became notorious for showing her naked body all over the first two seasons of “Girls.” And although there is less nudity on “The Mindy Project,” Kaling still frequently addresses body image issues in a hilarious, yet human, way.

Both of these women have used their shows to satirically examine the fallacies of female body expectations.

That is why it is so frustrating that both women turned their back on realism and body acceptance as soon as a fashion magazine retouched photos to make them more conventionally pretty.

Dunham claimed the outcry confuses her, because women should be glad “a woman who is different than the typical Vogue cover girl” was even allowed to be on the cover. What she fails to realize is it no longer counts as different once you have been digitally altered to be the same.

Kaling’s response is even more disappointing. She said the backlash is more offensive than the cover because it is the controversy that implies her body is unequal.
It isn’t the people complaining who have drawn attention to the fact Kaling looks different from the other women on magazine covers. Elle accomplished that when it blatantly tried to disguise everything about Kaling that didn’t fit into their fashion-mag version of a woman — from her hips to her ethnicity.

It’s a no-brainer that fashion magazines promote unhealthy and unrealistic images of the female body.

I don’t need to say it — everybody knows it.

That is why it is so frustrating that even when two women who promote a positive image of body acceptance are finally depicted on these magazines, their message is skewed and their credibility as role models is damaged.

Instead of being able to focus on how much these two amazing young women have
accomplished, we are once again forced to fight a battle against mainstream media.

At crunch time, these women have deserted the fight in favor of looking beautiful by fashion magazine standards. Way to fall into the very body-shaming trap we thought you were against.

Honestly, I like both of these women, and both of their shows. I’m glad they like their magazine covers.
I just wish they could like covers that showed their bodies looking the way they actually do.

I wish they had used this opportunity to stand up for themselves because, no, they don’t look like the usual women on magazine covers.
But no one does. That’s the point.

­— jordrile@indiana.edu
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Jordan Riley on Twitter
@RiledUpIDS.