by Dee Putri
Karlie Kloss, an American model, has been something of a poster child for the debate on “keeping it real” in magazines. Kloss’s nude
photos in Vogue Italia have been posted on pro-ana (pro-anorexia) and thinspiration blogs (as we know, these sites are very dangerous!). So, Numéro magazine (maybe having learned something?) airbrushed out Kloss’s ribs when they featured her in a later editorial. Kloss is very tall and very thin, and her ribs show in real life—but not in the edited photo.
Photographer Greg Kadel’s sudio released this statement about Numero’s editing choices:
“It was Greg’s desire to represent Karlie as she naturally is … slender, athletic and beautiful. That is why he released the images as he intended them to be seen by the public. He is shocked and dismayed that unbeknownst to him, Numéro took it upon themselves to airbrush over his original images. Greg stands by his original artwork and cannot stress enough that he not only was unaware of the magazine’s retouching but also finds the airbrushing of Karlie unacceptable and unnecessary.”
At the Huffington Post, Hanna Brooks Olsen says that “airbrushing models to make them look thinner is obviously not what women are looking for when they ask magazines to keep it real. … but that doesn’t mean that airbrushing thin models to make them look fatter (which is a thing) is what we want, either. Because it isn’t.” I agree with her. Totally.
Vogue Italia’s editor Franca Sozzani admitted during a speech she gave to students at Harvard University that “fashion becomes one of the causes” of anorexia. She talked about the industry’s use of images that glorify extreme thinness, to the point where we now accept it as normal and something to aspire to. Sozzani explained, “One of the reasons why a girl starts a too-strict diet is the necessity to correspond to an aesthetic standard which rewards thinness. And the current inclination to embrace a female beauty standard that exalts thinness has devastating consequences on many adolescents’ eating habits.”
In fact, Vogue Italia made a petition to get some of the pro-ana blogs circulating Karlie’s photos shut down. Sozzani wrote on Vogue Italia’s site, “Fashion has been always blamed as one of the culprits of anorexia, and our commitment is the proof that fashion is ready to get on the frontline and struggle against the disorder.” It seems to me that she has two arguments about whether or not fashion has a part on causes anorexia or not—I think it does. And this petition seems kind of ironic, actually: while Vogue Italia tries to battle pro-anorexia sites, the magazine still produces shoots that seem to ‘promote’ this disease.
Olsen says that what most of us want from magazines is “little to no airbrushing of models.” We agree, again! If magazines really cast models of all shapes and sizes and colors, we wouldn’t need to airbrush people bigger or smaller or lighter or darker. Images like the Kloss’s editorial would be part of a larger context of images, not the dangerous standard. We aren’t all white skinny models, you know Just stop manipulating! It’s no good–haven’t you ever seen Gossip Girl?
Why is it so hard for magazines to ‘Keep It Real’? Magazines can still sell fantasy without overwhelming photoshop–they did it for decades before the software existed. We need to see real girls and real women in magazines and in media, and we need to realize that we are not just what we look like. Maybe then we could have a better world, where we aren’t judging others (or ourselves) based on appearances.
Life is already hard. Please, magazines–make it a little easier.