Kiera Knightley goes topless for a cause
Kiera Knightley recently agreed to pose in a topless feature for Interview Magazine under one condition: she refused to have her body modified in the photos. After her unedited photos were released, Knightley told Times, “I’ve had my body manipulated so many different times for so many different reasons, whether it’s paparazzi photographers or for film posters. That [shoot] was one of the ones where I said: ‘OK, I’m fine doing the topless shot so long as you don’t make them any bigger or retouch.’ Because it does feel important to say it really doesn’t matter what shape you are.”
After seeing Knightley’s photos online, I felt an unexplained gratitude for her bravery and determination to make her point; the use of Photoshop perpetuates the myth that these unrealistic beauty standards are possible when in reality, they simply aren’t and never will be. Unfortunately, Photoshop and airbrushing seem to have become an inherent part of the beauty industry, manipulating the bodies and faces of celebrities to project impossible allusions of imperfection.
Knightley stood by her decision to flaunt her uneven and unaltered breasts claiming, “I think women’s bodies are a battleground and photography is partly to blame.”
Knightley does not stand alone in her fight against the manipulation of Photoshop. She is joined with celebrities such as Lorde, Lady Gaga, Brad Pitt, and Jennifer Lawrence, who have all famously spoken up against the image-enhancing tool.
Kate Winslet has been widely associated with her views against the photoshopping of her images. After having her appearance heavily altered in order to make her slimmer in GQ in 2003, she decided to take a stand. “I do not look like that and, more importantly, I don’t desire to look like that. I am proud, you know”, Winslet said. In 2009, Winslet told Harper’s Bazaar that she makes magazines use her original images when she sees them. “I will particularly say when I look at movie posters: You guys have airbrushed my forehead. Please can you change it back?”
When a celebrity can no longer recognize their own face in photos because of such heavy use of photoshop, may that be an indication that we have gone a little too far? It astonishes me that photoshop has become such an integral part of media culture, constantly modifying the images we see everyday to convince us that this unreachable goal of imperfection is what we should look up to.
By challenging the world’s unrealistic beauty standards, Knightley and other like-minded celebrities are taking an essential step towards encouraging the portrayal of real bodies within the media – something we don’t see very often. It is so important to promote the idea of body acceptance, especially to those of us who, instead of feeling ashamed of our flaws and imperfections, should embrace and flaunt them as being part of who we are – which is something that no one should ever try to airbrush away.