Photoshopping Keira Knightley

Body Matters
 Keira Knightley's latest photoshoot is a protest against all the Photoshopping she's ever received
 Kit Steinkellner
November 4, 2014
 

When you think of a protest, you tend to think of picket signs, sit-ins, rhyming chants,and so on and so forth. What you usually DON’T think of is a topless celebrity photo shoot. However, that’s exactly what actress Keira Knightley had done with her recent photo shoot for Interview—she turned her shoot into a protest. She posed topless for the magazine on the condition that Interview would not enlarge her breasts in post-production, something that apparently happens to Knightley’s photographs constantly.

Case in point, check out the (virtual) boob job Knightley received when she was featured as Guinevere on the poster of her 2004  film King Arthur.




That is a cup size difference for sure. If I were Keira Knightley I’d be weirded out by my body always looking like someone else’s body every time I did publicity shoots for films or posed for magazine shoots.

Not only is Keira Knightley taking a stand in her un-retouched topless photo shoot for Interview, she’s also got some powerful words to back up her actions.




“I’ve had my body manipulated so many different times for so many different reasons, whether it’s paparazzi photographers or for film posters,” Knightley told The Times of London. “That [Interview 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.”

This is obviously a personal issue for Knightley (and girl is not asking for much, she just wants her photographed boobs to look the same as her real-life boobs, for crying out loud!) but Knightley as a public figure also recognizes the influence her image exerts and how detrimental digital retouching is for women on the whole.

“I think women’s bodies are a battleground and photography is partly to blame,” Knightley told The Times. “Our society is so photographic now, it becomes more difficult to see all of those different varieties of shape.”

Knightley’s absolutely right. We are absolutely inundated with digitally altered images of women and it’s all too easy to look at these retouched-to-the-point-of-ridiculousness photos and believe that this is how women are actually supposed to look. It’s all too easy to feel inadequate in real life without software constantly following you around changing out your filters and adjusting your proportions in real time. It’s so important for women who wield power in the public eye to take a stand and be transparent about what they look like in real life, and moreover, to be proud of what’s real about them. Big ups to Knightley for wanting the world to see her as she really is and loving everything that is real about her body.

Kit Steinkellner 

In her online life, Kit is a contributing editor for the websites Book Riot and Food Riot. She also writes about film and television for the Santa Barbara Independent newspaper, and her work is featured on Huffington Post and xoJane. She writes the high school-centric webcomic Aces which her genius artist sister Emma illustrates.