You could always read the article: "This is about Vogue, and what Vogue decides to do with a specific woman who has very publicly stated that she's fine just the way she is, and the world needs to get on board with that. Just how resistant is Vogue to that idea? Unaltered images will tell."

I'm surprised Dunham didn't make 'no photoshopping' a requirement for agreeing to being interviewed by Vogue. Wouldn't she have that leverage? If she didn't, why not, and if she did, why didn't she employ it?

Well, here's my daily "maybe I should just give up the Internet completely" moment of the day.

@2: You can't separate Dunham from Vogue in this situation, though. These are photographs of Dunham that Vogue owns. So there's definitely a shaming aspect to this. They're saying "We know she can't look this good, so help us prove it."

@3: I don't think Jesus Christ could secure a "no photoshopping" requirement from Vogue.

I'm not so obtuse I don't know what people are getting at when they say "Photoshopped", but I wish we could be more specific. If there's issues with how people are altered in images, lets discuss those.

Photographers shoot RAW, the images come from the camera entirely unprocessed—simply saying it was Photoshopped is like saying they were "darkroomed."

Not to diminish the woman's point, I agree with her. I just wish people would write with a hair more literacy on the process—it'd be easier to get to the heart of the issue.

That tweet seems right. Dispelling 'model's are perfect myth' might help some women feel better. Proving Lena Dunham was photoshopped just seems to be aimed at proving normal women shouldn't think they are good enough to be on the cover of Vogue. There sure seem to be a lot of people who want to teach her that she shouldn't feel good about herself. Why does her feeling adequate anger some people?

I disagree that this is about proving Lena is disgusting. I think it is the exact opposite and what she does with her show. This is what a woman looks like and you don't need to "fix" it.

That is what I wanted to say. And then I went and re-read one of the last lines of the Jezebel article to support that -- and they let me down. "The final images are gorgeous; there's a 99% chance that the originals are, too."

Why the 99% qualifier? In that 1%, there sneaks in the "disgusting" idea.

Damn it.

I want a "use extensive Photoshop techniques" for my cover. Who wouldn't want to look better-than-real-life on a widely distributed mug shot? We're a vain species, accept or be depressed.

@8,5, et al: Her arm is missing in the image that leads off the article. I admit I'm a little curious as to what could have *possibly* been so horrific with it that it needed to be removed entirely. Is it a tentacle? A go-bot? Possibly the rest of the cast of girls, chained together Human-Centipede-style and shrunk down to arm-length?

I think Jez's point is more that you expect a certain level of artifice when you're looking at Lady Gaga or Gweneth Paltrow -- image manipulation is something they either embrace or are neutral about, even if it's still a disturbing and uncomfortable practice. Dunham's politics regarding body image are all strongly opposed to this kind of trickery, though, shrinking her down or hacking her arm off to squeeze it into Vogue's style guide is like bleaching a picture of Huey Newton to make him look less black.

@8,5, et al: Her arm is missing in the image that leads off the article. I admit I'm a little curious as to what could have *possibly* been so horrific with it that it needed to be removed entirely. Is it a tentacle? A go-bot? Possibly the rest of the cast of Girls, chained together Human-Centipede-style and shrunk down to arm-length?

I think Jez's point is more that you expect a certain level of artifice when you're looking at Lady Gaga or Gweneth Paltrow -- image manipulation is something they either embrace or are neutral about, even if it's still a disturbing and uncomfortable practice. Dunham's politics regarding body image are all strongly opposed to this kind of trickery, though, so shrinking her down or hacking her arm off to squeeze it into Vogue's style guide is like bleaching a picture of Huey Newton to make him look less black. It's overtly political.

Did the SLOG add in the disgusting comment in all by themselves or was a it a quote?

Regular reminder: Nick Denton is a scumbag, Gawker Media's empire is built on clickbait time/value skimming, and Jezebel is feminist like I am a goddamn giant squid.

Did Dunham lose her arm in a scandalous accident?

Remember the Gawker Stalker app?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-avakrRU…

@6, women in magazines routinely have filters and effects to remove unwanted texture (i.e., wrinkles, pores, zits, freckles, hairs) but also to completely reshape most parts of the body. When you see a model in Vogue, every inch of her has been rasterized and then altered -- legs and wrists and necks lengthened, bellies, asses, and thighs shrunk, eyes reshaped, etc. The fundamental geometry of the human body is often changed, for instance the distance from pelvis to collarbone stretched. There are numerous tutorials on Youtube to show how its done.

@12, they're proving she's a lying shitbag - thanks for clarifying. Pointing out the arm would be something - offering $10,000 and claiming Anne Liebowitz is a fake enters another realm.

Gawker is such a fucking cesspool of hypocrisy. Associating Dunham with this why? What the fuck will this prove? So much for the "feminist" pretense of Jezebel. Despicable.

And if they cared about women the ten thousand dollars should be going to a body positive charity of some sort - like something that helps people with eating disorders or something. But no. Their gonna blow 10K on some idiot fashionista snitch or celebrity.

Feminist here. I am sorry, but WHOOOO CAAAARES ZZZZZZZZ

On a related note, Gawker is offering $50 for the real photos of Adam in Vogue. Might be cya.

http://gawker.com/were-offering-50-for-u…

This goes off course pretty quickly, but…

@fnarf - Not that I'd expect anyone to know or care, but Photoshop has been part of how I make my living since version 3.0, and you spoke to my exact point. Body shaping, smoothing skin, etc.—there's certainly more flexibility now than in the days when airbrushes, camera angles and lens filters were the biggest tricks available, but I'm only talking semantics. “That’s Photoshopped.” Photoshop in commercial print work was already a given, but in the last decade since people started shooting RAW, it's become as much necessary processing tool in "developing" an image as much as it is in altering the reality of what was captured. The more literate people become with the process and terminology behind the image, the better we can talk about the actual issue at hand and better judge whether there is truly something vile going on before our eyes.

The camera does lie; or, It tells a different story than our eyes told us—white balance needs correcting, makeup might need softening, shadows might need to be pulled up. At the same time, sometimes those eyes belong to assholes that wants to reshape something meaningful; say, a woman who’s won over a legion of fans and reshape her to be more in-line with an impossible narrative.
Semicolons and m-dashes in the same post. I guess I’m probably the real asshole here.

Lena's body is on display all the time on her TV show, are people suggesting that those images are altered to make her look better?

An alternate view point from Slate

@24 I'm inclined to agree with the Slate article, personally. Lena Dunham is clearly fine with having her body appear before the masses. I think it's Vogue that can't stand having Lena Dunham's body appear as it really is on its pages, and they're clearly trying to get away with having their cake and eating it too. It's like they thought they'd get credit for featuring a woman with a non-model body without actually showing the reality of her non-model body.

@25: One thing I liked about the Slate article was how it mentioned the past example of Faith Hill, and their treatment of that situation. They seem to have treated Faith Hill with dignity, making fun of those who thought her original picture needed changing.

I had never heard of that woman before today. I feel robbed.

Are we really pretending to believe that her arm was edited out of that photo?