Yesterday, Jezebel posted an open call offering anyone $10,000 who can deliver un-retouched photos from Lena Dunham’s Vogue shoot. Less than 24 hours and…voila! In fact, it only took Jezebel two hours to get six allegedly unaltered images from the actress’ Annie Leibovitz shoot. Jezebel points out in detail the exact visual edits, of which there weren’t that many. Jezebel is, of course, trying to give the few changes that were made some meaning in a larger context:
“In the end, while Dunham’s images were not drastically altered, it’s important to remember how unforgiving the media is when it comes to images of women. Men are generally allowed to have pores and wrinkles; women are supposed to be ‘perfect’ — a state that does not exist. As Mother Jones‘ co-editor Clara Jeffrey put it on Twitter: ‘If [Lena]’s given us an image of a real woman on Girls, and they altered — perhaps without her consent, isn’t that a paradox that should be explored?'”
To their point, in the bathtub image that also features Adam Driver, he was not Photoshopped at all, with the exception of his leg, which was raised to come up out of the water, but there’s still no denying this whole fiasco was much ado about nothing.
Last night, Dunham tweeted, “Some shit is just too ridiculous to engage. Let’s use our energy wisely, 2014.”
