On Jezebel's $10,000 Lena Dunham Bounty

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Complex Original

Image via Complex Original

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First off, LOL at that one Vogue photo completely missing one of Lena Dunham’s arms. Speaking of appendages, Jezebel is all up in arms, throwing around 10 stacks like it's nothing in reward for the pre-Photoshopped, untouched images from Dunham’s Vogue shoot. If Jezebel did this for every woman who has ever been on Vogue’s cover since photo retouching was invented, it wouldn’t seem like such a personal attack, despite their assertions otherwise. Even if this is about Vogue and the magazine’s insistence on perpetuating harmful body types and digitally altering women to conform to the magazine’s own definition of beauty, this stunt doesn’t seem like the best way of going about it.

The question isn’t if the images have been Photoshopped. At this point, every major magazine is unabashed about their use of digital retouching. Evidence of the act—the pre-Photoshop images—isn’t necessary. The outrage, it seems to me, should be centered on the act itself. Does it matter if it’s photos of Lena Dunham or Naomi Campbell? Is it worse because Dunham eschews Photoshopping in other mediums in which she has more creative control over the final product? Can’t the discussion about body image and its portrayal in popular culture take place without the original pics? Especially since, in the call for their bounty, Jezebel admits that there are innumerable images of Dunham available on the Internet?

HEY JEZEBEL, CAN I HAVE $200 FOR A BEHIND-THE-SCENES LOOK AT THE SARTORIALIST? DESPITE WHAT SCOTT SCHUMAN WILL HAVE YOU BELIEVE, DUDE WAS JUST STARING AT HIS IPHONE'S HOME SCREEN, TOTALLY NOT TEXTING ANYONE OR ANYTHING.

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