We’ve all seen the extent of using Photoshop to manipulating bodies to slim them down – there are hundreds of Instagram accounts dedicated solely to showing how celebrities would look if they were ‘nipped and tucked’.
There are also accounts that call out stars and influencers for using airbrushing pounds off themselves… When it comes to the use of Photoshop, I think we can all agree that weight loss is usually the intended outcome, right?
Well, now, we have a new damaging photoshop trend. Ready?! Celebrities being edited to look bigger than they are. I know – our society’s obsession with women’s bodies knows no bounds.
This first came to my attention when people started sending me this picture of Kylie Jenner, which has been airbrushed to make her look bigger. Perusing the comments on the post, I saw many people praising this new phenomenon, stating that it was a ‘positive’ move as it helps bigger women to feel included in a space where they rarely ever are.
I understand the sentiment behind this reasoning, but I have to disagree – strongly. Yes, bigger and fat women need to be included in the celebrity sphere – TV, film and the modelling industry are all still seriously lacking in genuine plus-size representation – but not like this.
Real diversity is the celebration of actual fat bodies, not fake ones conjured up with editing software from a thin person. Fat people exist – even though the media would often have us think otherwise! So why don’t we look to their bodies instead?
Also, it must be noted that while Kylie’s arms, legs and stomach have been made bigger, her face is still very slim and chiselled – the image still feeds into unrealistic beauty standards for fat people. She still has a ‘desirable’, hourglass fat body – the body type that is often used to represent plus-size women in the media even though it’s not actually representative of the vast majority of fat women.
It’s not the first time we’ve seen celebrities being edited to look bigger – back in 2015, Spanish artist David Lopera went viral for photoshopping celebrities like Kim Kardashian, Mila Kunis and Jennifer Lawrence into fat versions. Again – it was widely praised for being ‘refreshing’, which arguably it was, but, ultimately, it was still using thin bodies to make the point.
This debacle smacks of actors wearing fat suits, which has also come under fire recently when Renee Zellweger was pictured wearing a fat suit in her upcoming series, The Thing About Pam, along with prosthetics on her face to make her appear larger. There are so many incredibly talented fat actresses – why were they not hired to play the role?
It all points to the deep-seated fatphobia that is omnipresent in the Western world. Rather than have an actual fat actress for a role or an actual fat person to celebrate on Instagram, we would rather a thin person who can, at the end of the day, take off their fat suit or remove the editing and still be thin. We appear to be so disgusted by fat that we would rather see someone fake it than see it in its real form.
Representation isn’t the only issue with photoshopping to make someone look bigger: firstly, nobody should have their images touched without their permission – whether they’re adding on or taking off pounds, it shouldn’t be a trend at all. It’s also indicative of our collective fixation on women’s bodies. If we weren’t so focused on body size, this wouldn’t be a thing in the first place – never mind a trend that is taking the internet by storm.
In an ideal world, body shape and size would simply be neutral parts of life. They wouldn’t be a concern and they certainly wouldn’t be hot topics of conversation. ALL shapes and ALL sizes would be accepted without question or without comment and we wouldn’t care about how much a celebrity weighs or whether they’ve put on a couple of pounds.
Of course, we live in a world dominated by diet culture and the belief that thinness is the best thing a human can achieve, so this isn’t currently possible (even though we are taking steps – surely but slowly!) – but for now, can we just leave women/women’s pictures/women’s bodies alone?!
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