Keira Knightleywants you to just say no to "Photoshopped" celebrity images.
She understands why you might resist her campaign. She's given in to the pressure from movie studios and fashion photographers, she's embraced the desire to be bigger and "better." But now she regrets it.
"I've had my body manipulated so many different times for so many different reasons, whether it's paparazzi photographers or for film posters," the 29-year-old actress says.
The best-known manipulation came in 2004 when her b*****s were pumped up on the poster for the movie "King Arthur."
The infamous "King Arthur" enhancement poster."I remember we had an interesting discussion when they said, 'We want to make them slightly larger and you'll get approval,' and I was like, 'OK, fine, I honestly don't give a s---,'" she's said. "But then they showed me the first copy and these things must have been double-Es, and they were down to my knees."
Knightley was younger then, more impressionable. She was trying to build her career. Now she cares exactly how she's represented. And she wants the real her to be out there.
"I did one magazine and found out you're not actually allowed to be on a cover in the U.S. without at least a C cup because it turns people off," she said.
That probably isn't a rule that's written down anywhere, but no doubt there are magazine editors who -- consciously or not -- follow it.
The real Keira in "King Arthur""I think women's bodies are a battleground and photography is partly to blame," she told The Times. "Our society is so photographic now, it becomes more difficult to see all of those different varieties of shape."
To make her point, she's just done a topless photo shoot for Interview magazine. She stipulated that the images could not be run through Photoshop or any other image-editing tool.
"I said: 'OK, I'm fine doing the topless shot so long as you don't make them any bigger or retouch,'" she said. "Because it does feel important to say it really doesn't matter what shape you are." (You can check out the photos, but be warned: they fall into the NSFW category.)
De-glamorizing has long been a means for an actress to be taken seriously in Hollywood. Halle Berry famously went grungy in "Monster's Ball," and won an Oscar. (She then followed it by playing a Bond girl and Catwoman, perhaps to wipe that grittier, realer version of her from the public's mind.) But film actresses are increasingly asserting themselves now not for Oscar buzz but for their own emotional health.Lena Dunham explained that she's sometimes n***d on her HBO show "Girls" "because it's a realistic expression of what it's like to be alive." She was responding to a male reporter who said he didn't "get the purpose of all the nudity on the show," seeing as the intent clearly wasn't to be "salacious" or "to titillate."
Jennifer Aniston has also waded into the issue. The former star of "Friends" has been Photoshopped many times in her career, but, at 45, she's trying to move beyond the call of perfection. Right now she's glorying in her role in the indie movie "Cake," in which she plays a woman who's been disfigured in a car accident. Aniston goes makeup-free in the movie and digitally unaltered in its marketing material.
Aniston saysit was "so fabulous, so dreamy and empowering and liberating" to not have to worry about looking sexy and glamorous. Julia Roberts, another over-40 movie star, also has weighed in recently,insisting she will not succumb to the Hollywood mania for plastic surgery, no matter how wrinkly or saggy she becomes.
It's unquestionably a cultural good that high-profile actresses are becoming vocal about how Hollywood's view of women -- and thus our wider culture's view as well -- comes from the fantasies of middle-aged white men.
Danielle Delph and her mother.danielledelph.comBut that doesn't mean Photoshop has to be demonized. The tool isn't by design an agent for evil. It can be a positive force, a spark for imagination and creativity. It can even be a wormhole to our past and ourselves.
This positive potential can be seen starkly in a series of manipulated personal photos that Danielle Delph put up on her website. Delph, an art director atWieden + Kenndy in Portland, calls the collection of images "If I Had Known My Mother Back Then."
She painstakingly Photoshopped images of herself as a young child and a teen into old photos of her mother at the same age. The results are a little unsettling, but they're also beautiful and touching, sending viewers off into their own pasts, into thoughts about their own personal histories and relationships, about what-ifs and what-could-bes.
"I've always wondered if my mom and I would have been friends had we grown up together," she wrote on her website. "Would we be in the same classes? Would we have the same sense of humor? Would people tell us we're inseparable? After seeing myself in her childhood photos, I'm pretty sure we would have been great friends."
Even Keira Knightley, the anti-Photoshop crusader, surely would be moved by Delph's project. Perhaps the images might make her wonder if she would be great friends with the bustier, more Hollywood-friendly version of herself on magazine covers and movie posters. Some Photoshop expert undoubtedly will come up with the answer.
-- Douglas Perry
Source: http://www.oregonlive.com/movies/index.ssf/2014/11/keira_knightley_and_a_wieden_k.html
