Lena Dunham was on the cover of Vogue and lady blog, Jezebel, freaked out and asked for $10,000 to see the untouched photos. The untouched photos surfaced and it turns out that Ms. Dunham wasn’t really photoshopped all that much. Jezebel was left looking like total douchebags. She talked about the saga here but now she’s being a little more free with her feelings — and word choices, going so far as to call what Jezebel did “messed up” (and rightly so).
From Grantland via USA Today:
That [the $10,000 bid] was messed up. I think Jezebel can be really smart and funny. I think … it’s hard to enjoy once you feel like they’ve made such a monumental error in their approach to feminism.
It was the most minimal retouching. I felt completely respected by Vogue. I felt like, ‘Thank you for removing the one line from my face because I’m 27 years old and shouldn’t have that there. I appreciate this.’
Instead of going like, ‘Hey, we [Jezebel] kind of (expletive) up. These pictures are not that (retouched). Lena, enjoy the Vogue spread you’ve been excited about since you were 8 years old.’ They were was like, ‘She’s not retouched, but she could have been.’ It was this weird, almost like political maneuvering that I just had a lot of trouble respecting.
Way to go, Jezebel. Nice one. You’ve done so much good and have put such great writing out there, I still don’t get why you did this.
I’m not a huge fan of Ms. Dunham or anything, but I think her response is excellent and I’m on her side. What Jezebel did was, indeed, “messed up” even if they had good intentions, and I doubt they did.
What do you think?