13 Times Celebrities Called Out Magazines Over Retouching
1. Kerry Washington
In a lengthy Instagram post shared last week, Kerry Washington responded to her cover of AdWeek magazine. "You know me. I'm not one to be quiet about a magazine cover. I always celebrate it when a respected publication invites me to grace their pages," she wrote. "I love ADWEEK. It's a publication I appreciate. And learn from. I've long followed them on Twitter. And when they invited me to do a cover, I was excited and thrilled. And the truth is, I'm still excited. I'm proud of the article. And I like some of the inside images a great deal. But, I have to be honest...I was taken aback by the cover."
"Look, I'm no stranger to Photoshopping. It happens a lot," Kerry continued. "Yesterday, however, I just felt weary. It felt strange to look at a picture of myself that is so different from what I look like when I look in the mirror. It's an unfortunate feeling. That being said. You all have been very kind and supportive. Also, as I've said, I'm very proud of the article."
2. Kerry Washington (again)
Before the AdWeek incident, Kerry Washington's March 2015 cover for InStyle received lots of backlash for, allegedly, lightening her skin.
InStyle offered a response on their website. "We are super fans of Kerry Washington here at InStyle. To feature her on the cover of our March spring fashion issue is both an honor and a delight," the magazine wrote. "We have heard from those who have spoken out about our newsstand cover photograph, concerned that Kerry's skin tone was lightened. While we did not digitally lighten Kerry's skin tone, our cover lighting has likely contributed to this concern. We understand that this has resulted in disappointment and hurt. We are listening, and the feedback has been valuable. We are committed to ensuring that this experience has a positive influence on the ways in which we present all women going forward."
Kerry also responded on Twitter:
3. Zendaya
Zendaya spotted a photo of herself in the November 2015 issue of Modeliste magazine that had been heavily photoshopped. And she was not happy! Sharing a side-by-side comparison of the real and retouched photos, she wrote that "these are the things that make women self conscious, that create the unrealistic ideals of beauty that we have."
"Anyone who knows who I am knows I stand for honest and pure self love," she continued. "So I took it upon myself to release the real pic (right side) and I love it😍😘 "
Modeliste saw the complaints and clearly took note by releasing a "Thank You" letter to Zendaya for raising the issue of retouching and by releasing the un-edited photos. Zendaya notes that the magazine later took down the offending images, writing, "Thank you @modelistemagazine for pulling down the images and fixing this retouch issue."
4. Lorde
Because Lorde is a huge badass, it was not a surprise when she took to Twitter to point out that Fashion magazine, a Canadian publication, had altered an image of her - and, in particular, her nose when she was on the cover in May 2014.
But this was not the first instance of Lorde calling out over-zealous editing. A few months before that, she had taken to Twitter to express her disappointment with a concert photographer airbrushing her skin too heavily, saying that "flaws are ok."
5. Kate Winslet
In a now infamous example of the retouched celebrity clapping back, after Kate Winslet covered the February 2003 issue of British GQ magazine, she, and the general public, noticed that the cover shot was juuuust a little a bit too much retouched.
According to the BBC, Kate said, "I actually have a Polaroid that the photographer gave me on the day of the shoot … I can tell you they've reduced the size of my legs by about a third," She also said that "for my money it looks pretty good the way it was taken," and that "I'm completely physically comfortable with who I am." Kate is famous for, among other things, speaking out about the natural body being the most beautiful body.
6. Ashley Benson
After seeing a promo photo for the fourth season of her show Pretty Little Liars in 2013, Ashley took to Instagram to discuss the amount of Photoshop applied to her and her co-stars:
She writes, "Saw this floating around....hope it's not the poster. Our faces in this were from 4 years ago.....and we all look ridiculous. Way too much photo shop. We all have flaws. No one looks like this. It's not attractive 🙈🙈" Regardless, the photo was released as the official key art for the fourth season of the drama, and ABC Family never responded publicly to the incident.
7. Troian Bellisario
After seeing her co-star's Instagram post about the Photoshop done to the girls' poster, Troian posted her own reaction. "Wow @itsashbenzo I couldn't agree more. Very cool concept as always," she added." But aren't we attractive enough women as we are? Why can't we just look like us.
And she was just getting started - a few months later the star called out GQ magazine for Photoshopping her (and, again, the rest of the PLL cast).
"So by now you have seen many a shot from #GQ and many people have said that we were photoshopped... OF COURSE WE WERE!" she wrote on Instagram. "That's a very specific type of photo shoot. And looking very blown out and perfected was obviously what they were looking for. Great. Cool. As long as we acknowledge how it was achieved so we know it's not real."
8. Lady Gaga
Lady Gaga was featured on Glamour's December 2013 cover and received an award from the magazine at the annual Women of the Year Awards.
She used her acceptance speech as an opportunity to speak against body issues and Photoshopping celebrities, citing her Glamour cover photo as an example (awkward). "I felt my skin looked too perfect, I felt my hair looked too soft," she said in her speech. "I do not look like this when I wake up in the morning … What I want to see is the change on your covers. When the covers change, that's when culture changes."
In response, Glamour editor-in-chief Cindi Leive told AdWeek magazine via email, "We love the cover - which captures exactly the way Gaga looked at our shoot - but we think her bigger point, that women like Malala Yousafzai are also cover-worthy, is RIGHT ON, and we couldn't agree more. We're proud of the diversity of women we show on our pages, and the diversity of opinions they represent - frankly, Gaga's willingness to challenge how American institutions think is a major reason we honored her to begin with."
9. Coco Rocha
Coco Rocha pulled no punches with Elle Brazil after the magazine reportedly did the dirty on her with their post-shoot retouching. They broke her contract!
Coco took to Tumblr to express her concern and wrote, "as a high fashion model I have long had a policy of no nudity or partial nudity in my photoshoots. For my recent Elle Brazil cover shoot I wore a body suit under a sheer dress, but recently discovered that the body suit was Photoshopped out to give the impression that I am showing much more skin than I actually was or am comfortable with. This was specifically against my expressed verbal and written direction. I'm extremely disappointed that my wishes and contract were ignored. I strongly believe every model has a right to set rules for how she is portrayed and for me these rules were clearly circumvented."
10. Kim Kardashian
In March 2009, an un-retouched version of this Kim Kardashian photo appeared on Complex magazine's website. Oopsies! When it was replaced with the retouched, and presumably"official" version later, the Internet freaked out.
Responding to the mistake, Kim took to her website and posted side-by-side photos with the caption, "So what? I have a little cellulite, what curvy girl doesn't? How many people do you think are Photoshopped? It happens all the time!" She then added, "I'm proud of my body and my curves, and this picture coming out is probably helpful for everyone to see that just because I am on the cover of a magazine doesn't mean I'm perfect." Amen to that.
11. Jennifer Lawrence
Technically not a magazine cover but it's Jennifer Lawrence, so we'll let it slide. Since 2013, J.Law has been one of the many faces of Dior, along with other celebs such as Marion Cotillard, Charlize Theron, Natalie Portman, and more. And, as is often the case with fashion industry, this means she gets retouched a bunch.
When Jen's first campaign for Dior went live, many people commented on how beautiful the images were - but also noticed that some of the images did not look exactly like the kooky J.Law we know and love. When shown the images, Jen told Access Hollywood, "Oh my god, I haven't seen this. That doesn't look like me at all. I love Photoshop more than anything in the world. Of course it's Photoshop, people don't look like that."
12. Kourtney Kardashian
In 2010, OK! magazine ran a cover featuring Kourtney Karadashian with her then-newborn son Mason - and promised an exclusive interview with the new mom. The only catch is that Kourtney told WWD that she never even spoke to the magazine, womp, womp.
She said, "They doctored and Photoshopped my body to make it look like I have already lost all the weight, which I have not," She also spoke out to her Twitter followers saying, "One of those weeklies got it wrong again…they didn't have an exclusive with me. And I gained 40 pounds while pregs, not 26…But thanks!"
13. Nicki Minaj
In February 2014, Nicki Minaj graced the cover of ESPN magazine's music issue and unfortunately, the photo editors of the magazine got it aaaall wrong. She took to Instagram, not once, but twiceto discuss how bad the Photoshopping was.
She writes, "I love my personal unretouched photos where my forehead doesn't mysteriously grow in length." Same, Nicki. Same. The next image that she Instagrammed was the actual cover and she captioned it, "When retouching goes wrong." I hope ESPN learned their lesson. (Although they never responded to the incident so I'm not sure that they did.)
