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Monday, July 24, 2006
 

enhanced and unenhanced photosSpeaking of reality shows and tabloids... and their old tricks of manipulating photos... Someone just sent me a Daily Mail story in which a British actress gives what the paper calls "an extraordinarily revealing interview." Keira Knightley says America has an attitude problem, as demonstrated by alteration of shots from her latest movie press kit. It's not the first time she has been "enhanced" by a promoter or magazine designer's computer, she says.

"I did one magazine and found out you're not actually allowed to be on a cover in the U.S. without at least a C cup because it turns people off.

"Apparently they have done market research and found that women want to see no less than a C cup on other women. Isn't that crazy? So they made my t*** bigger for that as well."

Most of the comments on the newspaper's website agreed that Americans (and Hollywood... and magazines) are outrageously fixated on breast size. Some pointed out that no cabal of magazine art directors keeps some flat-chested models off the covers of U.S. magazines. The only two comments of a bigger-is-better sort were signed with male names and U.S. addresses, one of them in Tennessee:

"Perhaps Ms. Knightley has become tired of looking like an unathletic 11-year-old boy. One can only hope that this is a harbinger of a trend."

His reading of the story may have something to do with another old tabloid tradition: the eye-catching headline. In this case, the Daily Mail's head was:

My flat chest is a turn-off, says Keira

(OK, I admit this is a silly item. But when the fall semester starts, I like to have at least one recent example of mainstream Photoshopping to show my online journalism students before I take them to Fark and the NPPA digital ethics pages.)


5:43:44 PM    comment []


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