Lena Dunham refuses to have her picture ever Photogshopped again. The "Girls" actress declared her stance against the common practice of magazines following her scuffle with the Spanish magazine El Pais.
Last week, Dunham accused the publication of Photoshopping its cover photo of her. The magazine responded with a statement saying the photo was no re-touched and it had obtained the original from the photo shoot the 29-year-old star did with photographer Ruven Afandor in 2013 for Entertainment Weekly magazine.
"I'm not sure what it was about this particular image that set me off. It's three years old, is licensed often, and was taken by a photographer I love. But I felt a need so immediate it was like demanding that a driver pull over so I could go to the bathroom despite being in the middle of a five-lane highway. I wanted to tell people, loudly: 'That's not my body!'" she wrote in her newsletter, Lenny Letter.
Dunham also detailed another instance when Jezebel called her out for being Photoshopped on the cover of Vogue in 2014. The online publication offered $10,000 for anyone who could get the raw photos from her shoot. She questioned why other actresses and models did not have their photos questions and compared it to "having the stuffing ripped from my bra at the seventh-grade dance."
The writer-director-actress isn't the first female celebrity to come out against Photoshop. Zendaya released a side-by-side comparison showing her re-touched and untouched hips and thighs. Kate Winslet added a clause to her contract as the face of Lancôme that any images of her would be "free of any additional editing."
When she saw the Spanish magazine cover, Dunham could "barely" recognize herself and studied the picture looking for clues as to what had change. "Maybe it was the fact that I no longer understand what my own thighs look like. But I knew I was done," she wrote.
She will continue to have her photo taken, referring to herself as an "insufferable ham," but will no longer allow "images that retouch and reconfigure my face and body to be released into the world." Dunham also realizes that may mean fashion magazines will no longer put them on their covers and she respects that choice.
"I thank them for letting me make a few appearances and for making me feel gorgeous along the way. But I bid farewell to an era when my body was fair game," she wrote.
